Another, is this game good thread. I have some specific questions if you guys can please answer

I was going to write a long response but I'm just gonna give you the TL;DR version.

If you already bought Elemental and haven't played it wait a couple weeks and it should be a solid game. If you haven't bought it yet you are probably gonna want to wait till the stand alone expansion Fallen Enchantress comes out unless miracles happen with Elemental patches before then. Right now the majority of patching is getting things in the game to even work as well as working on standard things like OOM errors. Due to a very poor release version they had to change a lot of fundamental mechanics which as you can imagine produces a lot of bugs that need to be weeded out. By waiting a few weeks if you are really desperate for some good TBS you probably won't be disappointed.

1: No spies.

2: Research: Build archivists, libraries etc. which grants either spell or technology research points. You research 1 spell and one tech at the same time. Techs are divided into five areas, you research an area then, when research is complete, you choose among a random set of technologies within that area. Some technologies are more rare than others, although if you don't get it one time doesn't mean you can't get it later. Spell research is more predictable.

3: You create an outpost, then all buildings are placed around that outpost. Everything takes food, gold or population to maintain. Food is the strictest limiter on city size and number of cities.

4: Combat is Homm style, but right now, without too much bells and whistles. Ranged, spells, melee. Turn based tactical hackenslasher. Right now it is not too fun.

5: Game pace is chosen at start - epic, normal, fast, etc, same as Civ 5 in that regard.

6: So far all expansions has, basically, been patches.

Ratatosk's post is fair enough, if you keep in mind that what he says is more likely a few months than a few weeks.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Thank you guys it does help. Oh I was hoping for spies.

Please keep them coming. This game looks so promising. I was wondering if I should get the game, so at least I can learn it. Then again, I don't want another Civ V, where I finally learn how to play the game and don't play it because it's not fun to play.

I see reading other posts, 1.2 is suppose to be coming out soon? So now the question is, get game now to learn the fundementles and hope patch makes it good, or just wait. So far from what I read on the forums, I should be waiting. Still on the fence.

You know when you have that "itch" to play a new game. That is what I have. But for me $50 is alot to spend on something that may be a chance game. I don't bother going by proffesional reviews, ala Civ V anymore, so I go by user reviews.

I will do some more research. Is there a demo?

I'll try not to repeat what the above posts already answered, which is all correct, just to add some details:

Research is quite a bit broader than, say, Civ. You not only have the 5 categories to pick from (civics, warfare, magic, etc.), but several (2-5ish) technologies to pick from within each category. The bottom line is you're looking at 10-20ish technologies to pick from at any given time, they just split up the choice by having you pick one of 5 categories first, and then pick a specific tech within that category after the research finishes. So if you pick the warfare category, upon completing the research you might get to choose between training soldiers with better base health, or better equipment for your soldiers/champions, or better city defenses. Say you take the equipment option; this leads to two new technologies, one further improving armor and one for weapons. So next time you research warfare there are 4 choices: better training and better city defenses are still available, but now further improved armor or weapons are options as well. Or you could switch to one of the other 4 categories instead of researching warfare again, which would all have their own techs to pick from. The "random technology" isn't really as big a deal as it sounds; if there are 3 techs available in warfare you're likely to have all 3 come up as choices.

As another poster mentioned, spell research is an entirely separate system - it gives you actual spells to cast, and is not to be confused with magic research, which is one of the 5 categories described above and gives you buildings and spellbooks and items and such associated with magic.

Cities are, well, important. Like cities in Civ or planets in GC2 or [pick any other TBS], they collect the bulk of your resources and build most of your units. Elemental is unusual in the TBS genre in that you're not completely reliant on cities; you can hire wandering champions instead of training units, and champions can for example have a trait to generate a little research each turn, but still it's 95% all about the cities. You can get pretty significant defensive bonuses in a city, but are they hard to take? Honestly the AI isn't good enough at combat for that to be the case, at least not yet.

Combat is a basic tactical system. There's already more to it than, say Civ4:BTS or GC2 where you just roll the dice and hope for the best (the biggest weakness of those TBSes, imo), but it needs a lot of work. There's not a lot of variety among units, so there aren't really many 'tactics' you can use, but the AI is terrible at it, so you don't really need clever tactics anyway. Still it has potential, and the upcoming expansion promises a major revamp of combat, I think in the long run it'll be one of the features that makes Elemental stand out from other TBSes. It still beats checking the percent chance of success and hoping RNG doesn't take a dislike to your favorite hero (as in certain other TBSes), but don't expect too much from combat at the moment, it's the feature I expect the most improvement in over the next few months.

Patch 1.2 may take a bit (as a wild guess, I'd say 1-2 months?), and the expansion probably longer, but we all have high expectations for both - probably justified, given how much 1.1 improved the base game. The demo has been promised to come after 1.1 (i.e. about now), haven't heard anything about it lately.

How is the manual? Is it a Dead Tree Format manual in the box? Is it helpfull? Is there like a "civilopidiea" for Elemental?

As I was doing some research, I read there is scenarios you do? I don't really care for scenarios. Is there an option where you start with a "settler" and found a city or town, and then continue from there? How may cities do you usually end up with? I like to have like 10-20 cities or more. From the screens I have seen, I see people had less than 10. Is this ok, or something else that is wrong with Elemental. I like to have more not less.

How customizable is the game? I mean can you make your own armies? I mean can you give your army like swords to make them strong, but you can also give them light armour so they can be faster, or heavy armour to make the be able to take more damage but they become slower. Or give them like bows, but no armour so they can be very vast, like scouts, but not very good in combat.

It looks like nobody answered this: You won't get the expansion for free. That deal ended at the end of the year. However, Stardock is doing things a bit differently with filestructures and whatnot: If you buy E:WoM now, you get the expansion discounted and at an expansion price. If you don't, it'll be purchasable as a full game. It's going to do more with tactical combat and exploration; combat should have much more depth to it, and it might include some form of espionage, although nothing like that has bee announced so it's not a huge focus.

I just noticed the specs. It says a dual core 2.2 ghz. I only have a dual core 2.0 ghz 4gigs of ram, windows 7 64bit. Now I am worried the game will run slow.

My laptop is an Acer Aspire 8730 with an NVidia 9600M GT graphics card. So will I be able to run the game? I see it's only $40 on impulse. So if my laptop can run the game, is there any advantage to buying the game at the store and having the box?

I paid $90 (for the Limited Edition box in Australia) and am happy enough.

The manual is OK - though the game changes have made some of it obsolete.  My PC is around 3 years old, AMD Athlon something or other with 4GB and a 256MB video card, the game runs just fine for me.

I don't think they have a demo yet, which is a shame - lots of questions which can only really be answered with a 'hands on'. I often find feature descriptions which sound great then the game is a dog, and vice-versa.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

best bet would be to wait for a demo.

My guess: it would run a little slow, but bearable.

I called my local EB store, since I hate waiting for the game to download. They say they have one copy of the limited edtion. Is it really worth it? How is this "cloth" map? I love collecting minitures, and from the video I saw, it's not really that big, BUT the detail looks good. So to me, the mini if bought at a store seperately is about $20 I believe.

So do you think I wouild be happy with the limited edtion. I think they are selling it for $75 + taxes. So for me that would be $85 Canadian.

I know, if I buy it on Impulse, it will be $40. But that Dragon mini looks so nice. So how is the book? I forget what it is called, but it gives you the history and what not of the world. The manual looks cheap. Then again, what manual doesn't look cheap in the 2000's anymore? So I will not knock it off. (Guess I am old school want Baulders Gate manual :))

Also, is there a strategy forum, or a place I can see that explains what does what? I know Civ V has this, but does Elemental? I am thinking of getting the Limited edtion, which I normally do not.

Technically you don't start with a settler, just your sovereign who has a one-time "found kingdom" ability which starts your first city. But essentially, yes, it works as you describe it - you start with the ability to found a city and build up from there. There's also a small campaign (that's probably the scenario you're describing), although you don't need to play it by any means.

Number of cities is actually a subject of some debate; some prefer a smaller number of well developed cities, some prefer huge empires like you, etc. The good news is that it's up to you, it's certainly possible to have 10-20 cities if you like, it's also possible to win the game with just 1 (depending on what kind of victory you're going for). Game balance wise, right now I think spamming lots of cities for the caravan bonus is considered the most powerful strategy, so luckily your preferred style of play may actually be the best one at the moment - but that's certainly subject to change as the game balance changes.

Units are very customizable - you design your own, choosing weapon, several pieces of armor, and even magic rings and such with the right tech/resources. There are ranged weapons (bows) and many kinds of melee weapons (swords, hammers, spears, and so on). The downside is that all these equipment options are, to be blunt, terribly balanced. At any given time there's generally one best weapon and one best set of armor available to you; when you research more and get better weapons/armor it tends to make the the old stuff obsolete. Your main limitation will be resources, you'll basically find yourself always using the best armor/weapons you can afford. So putting leather armor on your archers isn't a bad idea if you're short on metal, but as long as you have the metal to spare you may as well give them full plate, there's just not much advantage to using leather over plate except the cost. Anyway unit customization is very promising, it gives you a lot of choices, those choices just aren't very well balanced yet.. this ties into the problems with the combat system, there's currently no reason to want anything except the highest damage and armor possible in tactical combat. I expect this all to change when combat gets redone in the expansion, probably not sooner than that.

Thank you very much guys, I will be getting this game. While I don't like waiting for the game to download I will get this off Stardock. At $40 instead of paying $85 for the limited edtion with taxes included, $40 is a reasonable price to pay. I am looking for a good game. I don't care if it's not the best game ever, it seems the current version is playable now, and a few people are at least having fun now. So I will try it out.

Thank you all for you time helping me out.

Is there a manual I can download off Stardock, so I can read it while the game is downloading?

I haven't checked the manual these days, but when 1.1 hit the contents of it didn't match precisely the game... like traits for Sovereigns and such.

A few more comments

Research: Tech research and spell research are very confusing because when you choose a tech, you get it as you click it, while when you choose a spell, you get it X turns later. This is quite annoying at first. Both tech systems should behave the same, the spell manual and research system is quite unfriendly in terms of knowing what you already know. On the other hands, the spells are well described, but I haven't found anything resembling a tech tree worth checking.

There's no tech stealing afaik and I haven't seen trading either but never went into diplomacy.

One glitch with cities: If your soevereign founds a city and it's razed/lost, you can't build another one unitl you get a city and build a settler there.

Combat is tactical a la moo, the number of options and spells may not be huge but it's decent. It's also very easily abusable (fast characters can outmaneuver the enemy way too easily as in MoM).