If you want something to play during your christmas leave, don't buy this. The only reason to buy before the end of the year is the free expansion, but I would rather just not buy, because there's a risk you play it now and it ruins the experience even after the game finally comes together.

I vote no buy, wait until 1.2 (or later)

Well I'm convinced. £30+ for an unstable beta is too much. I will jut try and forget this game exists and come back next Christmas. 

For me the game is stable, fun and it feels definitly not like a beta. And as you can read, there a two big partys right now and it ends up in -> You pay the money. Its your choices.

again thanks for the replies.... Sir_Linque hit the nail on the head. I want the game but looking for something to play during the next two weeks. I just found Fallout New vegas in the closet...sorry wife....so looks like I will have something to occupy my time, after christmas anyway. ( I swear I wasnt looking for my present...was looking for a jacket...really ). It kills me because this game looks exactly like the games I like. I can wait a bit though.

thanks!

Merry Christmas!!!

1.1 is a good, addictive, old-style TBS game. It doesn't feel like a beta anymore. I vote buy.

1.09 was stable yet quite annoying to play - broken rules, and vast feeling of unused potential, like playing an idea for a game. 1.1 is stable and very addictive. There are still some minor issues, but not game-breaking like before.

IMHO 1.1 is a perfect state for initial release version. Fun to play and makes you hungry for patches and expansions.

My vote would be yes.  Just finish a great game.

Here's my personal view.

When the game came out, I thought it was an 8 out of 10.  That's what you get for working 5 months at 100 hours a week. If anyone ever asks what the effects of long term overtime, point to Elemental.  Because not only did I think the game was an 8 out of 10 but we had the former editors of IGN and Avault working here.

Now, that said, once I had some time to get some distance and look at the game objectively, the shipped game was, at best, a 6 out of 10 game.

v1.1 brings it to, IMO, a 7 out of 10 game.  

The biggest issues I have with the game are:

1. The AI. Which I am in charge of.  The diplomacy AI absolutely sucks and the AI's strategic AI needs a lot of work still.

2. The mechanics in v1.1 are better by far. That's largely because of Kael and Toby to be honest. But the magic doesn't feel right. You don't get to anything good until later in the game. There should be a lot more progression.

3. The general tech tree is really spotty. We need more "Stuff" across the board.

Some people have said that Elemental shipped unfinished. THat's really not the case. It just sucked.

So should you get it now? Well, really that depends on whether you believe we (Stardock) will get our act together over the next half year because if you buy it now, you'll get the first expansion pack for free which is now expected to go out this Spring or early Summer.

Now, this is a bit of news because we originally indicated that the expansion pack woudl come out in Winter.  But the fact is, Elemental needs serious surgery for it to get to where our community and fans expect it to be and I've already approved the necessary budget to make that happen.

So v1.1 is better but it makes Elemental go from a weak game to a decent game. v1.2 (January) will improve this further but if you're interested in being part of a game experience that isn't a "consumable" -- a game that you play and toss out while waiting for the next COD update, this game is probably for you.  

If you are attracted to this game because of magic, like I was, than stay away. 

This game has turned into buying armor and weapons to be a warrior not a mage.  I have currently played all levels of difficulty and magic is lacking in spells, but usable in normal diff.  Magic becomes useless the higher you go in difficulty. 

Current system you only get to cast 1 spell per combat round and the only spell that can attain the highest damage is arcane arrow.  This spells damage is 50% of your intelligence.  So lets say you have 70 intelligence and cast arcane arrow you will hit for 35 damage per turn.  Yet currently if you get bundled up in armor you can run up and melee 3 to 5 times for 60+ damage for a grand total of 180 to 300+ damage a turn.  The game to me has turned into who has the highest level of armor and the most damaging melee weapon.

I myself purchased this game before release because I was sold on the fact it was a successor to MoM, especially with the idea I would have my avatar walking around kicking ass with my Champion / Hero instead of locked up in a tower.  Yet as it is right now it is not even close or probably never will be in concept or feel.  Even when magic was stronger in the old versions it was not all that magical and we are only given a handful of spells.

The only thing I can say good about this game is the developers with the follow up work and dedication they have given the game.

It all boils down to what you want to experience in this game.  If magic was not a strong selling point than the game is ok to buy, but I would recommend something else for your money like Total Wars Medieval II or King Arthur because when it comes to combat those games are more strategic, polished, price tag is much cheaper and replayablility is high.

I'm now in the 'Yes. Buy now.' camp because it IS fun to play - even if there is a lot of room for improvement. Elemental is definitely one of the most ambitious games I've ever played. Most games are played within a fairly narrow scope but Elemental combines many concepts and thoughts which means getting the balance right is really tricky.

The game being so ambitious makes it a really easy target for criticism because when you focus on individual elements such as the magic or the lack of racial diversity it makes the whole game sound weak. But Elemental really is stronger than the sum of its parts.

What Stardock have done shifting the game from version 1.0 to 1.1 has been inspiring but there is still a long way to go to get it really polished.

There are currently better (much older) games out there such as the Age of Wonders series but with 1.1 the gap has narrowed enormously. If this is the sort of game you are likely to play for years to come then I'd say get it now.

Well thats actually the bit I most emphatically believe. I did not discover Gal Civ until Dark Avatar had just come out, and a whole number of patches and improvements flowed from there. It was a great game and it just kept getting better. God knows how long its been, but I still keep firing it up years later. I don’t do that with anything else I can think of. Well maybe Sins every now and again, and I play Demigod non-stop.

Oh yeah, Brad, while your on the thread Demigod needs an update, if you could kindly have a word with GPG.

So I do believe stardock will be producing a 8/10, maybe a 9/10. Bugs and crashes are irrtating as hell.  Although it seems maybe 70% of people are enjoying it right now.  When does that expansion pack offer expire, is it good until the new year?

Don't know why its quite as pricey as it is though.

Yes.  So long as you purchase Elemental before 1 Jan 2011, you'll get 1 expansion free of charge.

And about GalCiv........, I have GalCiv I w/ Altarian Prophecy.... and I still play it.  And I will be getting GalCiv II Ultimate Edition before the end of this week.

-.-

That's how I feel about it.

Myself I haven't gotted it yet simply because I wasn't sure how good the game were going to be. I still don't know....Frogboy (CEO of Stardock) have said that they will eventually make it the best they can. I recall a post where he said they would make it like Master of Magic but I might be remembering wrong here....

But since fixing the game requires a redesign of the techtrees and other big changes, I'm not sure if they'll pull it of. People have said that Elemental is a bit like an Excel spreadsheet just like GalCiv II was since that what Brad (CEO) knows.

But since Kael have now (after v1.10) taken over the leadership of Elemental the future looks bright.

I'm considering getting it now that you can get the Collectors Ed with free shipping. Who knows for how long they will remain in supply..?   But then again, if the game doesn't become good then it's wasted money....I don't know.....If they make a Silver edition with the Collectors Edition + 1st expansionpack for the current price of the Collectors Edition then I might get it later....

It's a hard situation since I want to support Stardock but the game have to be good enough as well. And currently, it's not. Even worse though, I'm not sure if it'll ever be able to challenge Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (except for A.I).

The game has a charming artistic design which I quite like (that, and the promise of MOM legacy).

However, it's really a matter of belief. Most people here utterly, absolutely believe that in the end, Elemental will be something great (and it's good that the devs are among them). Personally, I have played about 10-15 games so far, and the game still fails to suck me in - and I cannot precisely define why. I tried to play older games just to see if it's not just my age - but MOO2, MOM, they both still have the charm.

I would say the weakest point is the magic system, the spells are just modifiers to production or stats, or basic damage dealers. Nothing so grand as Dominions 3 or the old MOM, but the promise is that it will be worked upon.

The combat, unfortunatelly, is also a bit lacking - the stats and pretty units are there, but the overall system is still simplistic, and the tactical elements (terrain, flanking, local superiority, morale, etc.) are almost entirely missing, so it just blows down to a line of units trading blows, and the guy with best stats wins.

So if I ask myself: "Would you buy it again?", the answer is probably not. But I like the dev team a lot, they are really trying to create something with passion in contrast to the uncaring corporate dinosaurs. So I wish them good luck... and if they succeed, we will have a nice game to play as a pleasant surprise.

What is so ambitious about this game? 

Are you referring to all the work they are doing because the game needed it? 

Are you referring to the fact that they are trying to give us a game they promised?

I am very lost about the ambitious comment because there is nothing here that is ambitious besides people trying to fix a game.  They are not creating something new and exciting.  Read Brad's comments on the game he admits this right above my previous reply in this post.  If anything alone speaks volume of this game it is Stardocks willingness to make this game into what it should have been.  I admire the fact that Brad alone apologized to the community because almost nobody else would have done that.  They would have ran off into the sunset with our money.  Now that does not mean I was happy about spending the money I did as of right now, but maybe one day I will be.

I just dont see nothing ambitious about the game.  Its genre has been here and everything they are putting into the game has been done before.  People are raving about the 1.1 patch like it fixed the game and it is worthy of recognition now, but: 

• People are still having crash issues due to memory which everyone said they fixed. 
• Melee combat system is out of control even on ridiculous difficulty setting.
• Magic is completely useless to the point it cannot even be used on harder difficulties.
• Still more bugs to fix that have existed since the launch of the game.
• Depending on the difficulty setting X amount of starting turns is completely boring with nothing much to do at all.  Obviously the boredom is a lot longer the harder the difficulty is.
• You can win on any difficulty with just a hero or your Sov alone by equipping the best armor and best weapon.
• No sense of adventure or excitement
• No sense of power or a feeling of accomplishment (due to combat unbalance issues)
• No attunement to your Sov because character creation is very weak

In fact I just stopped playing 2 days ago because here is the break down of my last 3 games:

• games 1 and 2 I cannot even end the turn due to the auto explore bug
• game 3 was over as soon as I conquered my first nation Altar, but did not want to finish it because I was tired of crashing once every 30 mins to an hour (large map ridiculous diff)

As someone said in a different post in this forum there is no sense of just one more turn.

I'm in the "buy it now" camp myself.  I feel like the game has made some really significant improvements in 1.1, and is honestly fun in it's own right.  There are still some bugs, some bigger than others, and not everyone seems to have the same issues.  Overall, I have personally been lucky I think, because I've only had a few niggling issues here and there.  Menus that sometimes seem to have a mind of their own, unit card data that seems to change to whatever it wishes, some family tree awkwardness (the picture of my character in the family tree is the same as that of a newborn baby daughter).  It hasn't impacted my ability to actually play the game itself though, and it's been fun learning the game, and I know that it will only get better as more updates and expansions come out.

@Phauren -

The ambitious comment comes not from the amount of work being put into the game (even though it has been a lot), but the game itself they are trying to create.  They're creating a brand new engine, adding a lot of elements from different genres into one game, while at the same time trying to live up to the standard set by GalCiv I and II.  On top of that, they're creating, for lack of a better term, an open source-ish game which allows people to freely add content to the game.  Lots of factors involved, and in my mind, definitely an ambitious project. Maybe they could have waited longer to release the game, but in the end, I think the early release has only served to make the game better, because it opened Frogboy's eyes to the problems in the game and allowed him (after some rough times) to objectively look at the game and see what needed to be changed.

Creating a new engine is something companies do from time to time it does not make a game ambitious.

Open source games such as mods have been around for a very long time in multiple games this is not ambitious and it is almost a standard today for PC games.  Don't get me wrong it is a great feature that breathes life into games for multiple years and I am glad it is around.

These reasons are not ambitious and it is wrong to steer people in the wrong direction when they are asking for advice from their fellow gamers.  I listed actual facts above yet you list no reasons why it would be a good game to purchase or actual reasons why the game is ambitious.  Their is no draw currently to the game, no sense of accomplishment, no strategy or I should say multiple strategies.  When I start a game no matter what difficulty I am on I know I already won the game.  Their is no feeling that oh my god I am in trouble which leads to no sense of excitement.

Don't get me wrong I hope they deliver on this game because I have been dying for a game like this for a long time, but to tell other gamers it is golden after the 1.1 patch is wrong or tell them well if you purchase now you will get the a free expansion.  I would have preferred to purchase the game as it was advertised to us and paid for each expansion because it would have been worth it.  The game has so many game play imbalances to the point it is not fun to play, some of the bugs I could live with as long as they were fixed.

It's true, some companies do that from time to time, but more often than not these days, companies are licensing engines and building upon a pre-existing foundation.  Very few companies create engines from the ground up while developing a new IP, but for an independent developer, it's even less common.  I would still say the scope of the project would be considered "ambitious" because of the various things they're trying to accomplish within one product.  Agree to disagree.

Also, I think if you read most of the comments, nobody is saying it's "golden" or "perfect" by any means.  They, like myself, have simply said it is a game they feel is worth buying now. Given Stardock's tracks record in post game support, and the fact that I'll get a free expansion is reason enough to purchase it in my mind. There is a fun game in there to me, I have enjoyed learning the game, exploring the different strategies, even if it isn't perfect.

In Frogboy [reply (#32)], you can trust.  BUY IT and by 1 year anniversary of the release, the AI will be much better as Frogboy mentioned in his various posts. AI usually takes time to improve due to user inputs.

Anyone who played GC2 play this?  I haven`t bought it, I`m unsure about it.  From what I`ve seen it incorporates alot of GC2 mechanics in a fantasy suit.

Is that accurate?

Thanks for all the replies. I am currently downloading it. Overall what won me out was two things. 1.)Stardock is all over this game to make it great...and I am loyal Stardock customer ( gal civ 2, sins ). They have not let me down. The responce on this forum is also part of this, the people on this forum are extremly helpful.

2) I cant get over the graphics. love it. I am a sucker for this kind of thing. I was all over the game borderlands and I am not all that into FPS. but since it was different looking it sucked me right in.

and frogboy...5 months..100 hour weeks...thought my job was long hours...I appreciate your dedication

There are some came from GC2 like design a unit (you can design your own ships with near-endless possibilities) but quite many systems like how cities (planets for GC2) are being handled are different. You really can't control things during the battle (IMO Elemental is actually a BIG step forward on battle system from GC2). And there are some others different.

But really, elemental is fantasy world while GC2 you are handling the whole galaxy. Theme itself is very different.

ddzwik, I would like to hear what you think about the game after you play it a bit. I personally like it a lot, just waiting for the AI to be improved, more magic and better tac battles.

 1.1 is closer to an 8 IMO but it has potential to be a 12  you guys are really getting things done I love the attitude in this post. I have 100% faith in Brad, and Stardock.

Edit: I've now played 3 games of 1.1 and about 30 hours since it's release. I stopped watching TV, and picked up insomnia.

 1.1 scores 5.5/10 atm for myself & my group of friends.

  I have been a fan of SD long before I ever joined the forum community & as such jumped into this game with the expectaion that it would need work. But my expectation to play an RPSG hooked me even if this fantasy genre didin't have those creatures & monsters generally seen in many others. Needless to say that was not the case. EWoM is not a Magical Role Playing Strategy Game.

   Regarding version 1 & 1.09e:

•  In Canada we have something called Truth in Advertising. (now dont get me wrong, I'm not accusing of SD of any sort of lies...- thought I needed this disclaimer as a means to protect myself somewhat from the minority of gamers who rabidlly defend SD sometimes- shame on you. x.X) Now I mention this because many people new to SD have the right to fully expect there 40-50$ to buy them a game that can be played "out of the box", since that is generally the industry norm. The rest of us fans with SD, since the beginnning especially, know that generally this is not the case. So we are willing, even expecting, to play & work through the versions & all of the problems & glitches that are associated with them. Sometimes for years if need be... to make the finished product pretty damn good if not fucking amazing. Wow, takes me forever to get ot the point... Tell your potential buyers (especially those new people joining SD for that 1st time) that no (or very few) Beta-Game Testers were harmed in the makng of this product. Tell them they will become part of the SD familly (who almost ^^ allways argue amongst themelves while working on issues) & encourage them to enjoy the enitre process from beginning to end. That would save you alot of face & headaches with pretty much everyone new to the company. 

   Regarding verions 1.1:

• Dramatically more stable for the majority of players but also less fun to play than the previous 1.09e version, despite it's frequent crashes. I find that the games replayability is low to nill mainly because magic feels so unmagical & that there is no challenge to winning a game even on ridicoulus with convential arms. 
• A friend of mine, trying EWoM for the 1st time (version 1.1) summed it up after she played for 10 hours non stop.

"I can't believe I spent so long doing so little with magic; am I doing something wrong?"

I do believe that EWoM will one day hit a 9/10 or even a 10/10 score. Its SD's track record that inspires that confidence. 

   Hahaha, glad to hear your joining the ranks of EWoM, nothing beats making an informed choice. Happy hunting.

How could you rate the game an 8 when we still have:

• bugs
• unbalanced gameplay
• magic non exsistent
• people still crashing
• weak AI
• No diplomacy what so ever
• Tech trees need work
• character creation that actually lets you customize your character

This game is not even near an 8 maybe a 5 at best.  Hopefully with v1.2 it might get to a 6 or 7.  I dont know how you could rate this game so high and this is what I am talking about people saying v1.1 made this game golden.  These are the kind of replies that scare me because if they are the majority work might actually stop on the game.