In terms of relations, that system works pretty well. The situation you describe can't happen simply because the evaluation system doesn't occur that often. The reasons they do or don't like you are displayed in the foreign policy window. The more negatives, the less they'll like you.

In addition, while in the beta the AI could break its treaty obligations, that bug was fixed (that's why we have betas <g>).

A lot of the things I've read in this thread simply aren't applicable and haven't been in awhile or we simply disagree. A beta isn't a released game. Condemning us on bugs in a beta version, especially after those bugs were addressed isn't very constructive. 

My suggestion to the OP is not to play betas of games. The sausage factory that is game development isn't for everyone.

I'm renaming the topic since its a bit ridiculous to make a rant about about bugs encountered in the beta and then refer to it as the "final verdict".  

OK, I've been trying to hold back a bit, but now it's time to say how I really feel...

Dear Developers.

Please stop making this game more like Civilization or (insert title).  If I want to play a game like Civilization, I'll buy that title.  I don't want you guys to make another Civ game.

I originally bought Elemental because it did a lot of things differently than Civ does.  But I am currently seeing a lot of Civ-like mechanics/conventions/design choices in the current version of LH.  In fact, I'd still be regularly playing the original Elemental game/design regularly today IF it was as stable as LH now is, with a few added features you've come up with since that release.

Sure, there are still some innovative concepts that have survived.  But this game continues to get dumbed down, and become even more Civ-like, at a time when many of us expect more depth and sophistication in our designs, and better from you guys specifically.  This was no time to be taking Occham's Razor to the extreme.

You brought us Galactic Civilizations, an award winning design and certainly one of the Definitive 4x titles out there.  A good number of us want more the magic of THAT game in this one.  In fact, this IS why a lot of us bought Elemental in the first place, because we had faith that you could successfully bring many of good features/innovations from that title across to this one, along with a bunch of new innovations that you've shown us the ability to bring us in the past.

And there were some deeper concepts and intricate game mechanics in Galactic Civilizations, and one phrase I'd NEVER use in describing that game is dumbed down.

Is LH a decent game?  To a degree yes.  Is it worthy of it's predecessors, though? A good number of us think not quite.  It'll probably sell fairly well, but the Elemental Franchise could be SOOOO much better than this result.  And it breaks my heart to see you guys 'settling' instead of innovating further.

Get back to your roots please.  The flotsam of good features that have been thrown on the pyre is sickening, really.  AND NO, I am not referring to Encumberance, and I don't appreciate you trying to imply that this is THE major issue a good number of us have with the most recent iterations of LH (while it was a nice innovation that a lot of us would like to see kept as an option at least, that's such a minor issue in the grand scheme of things really).

Unfortunately, Brad has recently alluded that this might just be the last iteration of Elemental, so it's probably too late for an appeal to have any effect.  Which is sad.  So, this essentially means we will NEVER have properly working Dynasties in Elemental, Boats (outside of scenarios), Unique Tech Trees for each race, actual dungeon maps instead of the repurposed maps, more flexibility in Hero/Champion design (on the game end, not the coding end), and a good number of other things that have been mentioned numerous times.

Sure, the modders will try to rectify some of these issues (note what they did with further balancing the Tech Trees and such in TOA after you guys shifted focus from that game, not to mention all of the cool mods).  But a lot of the above mentioned Elemental issues are beyond their control/reach.

So, I'm guessing this appeal is too little too late, but if LH does well enough to warrant a fourth look, PLEASE get back to your roots, and reincorporate the design decisions you originally made (your 'gut instincts' as it were) into the current engine.  Your initial instincts were on the mark, the implementation just wasn't given a fair shake.

And stop trying to clone Civ or (insert title)!

I have to agree here with tjashen.  I really liked the original game and with a few of the features of the newer versions added to it would have made for an amazing game.

Some simple things that could have been.  While I love the food/population system I have some things I wish could have been implemented with it or brought back.  Excess food converted to a exportable food instead of a faction bonus and then imported to a specific city since food is a finite resource.  One, or many, could be food exporters and one, many could be food importers which is the way it works in the real world.  The specialist system was absolutely brilliant and I would love to see it make a comeback as it solves support issues for population/troops/buildings.  Dynamic production values for population sizes should never have been cut in favor of flat values for city sizes as once you level a city up it just becomes a static value no matter if you have 1 person or 600.  Population is a resource and should be treated as such not a growth mechanic.  Some other simple things that could have been backported was the simple system for dodge versus accuracy.  This was very easy to understand and with the stat systems in E:WoM would have worked just fine.

Hmm the more I think about it the more I think many of us would like to be able to just either tinker with the more basic functionality of specific designs, basic stats, or have an updated patch for E:WoM which allows us to implement these changes back to it.  Or better yet bring the changes forward from E:WoM to FE/LH engine.

Let me reiterate what I have said before, I love this series but I wish it went the direction of E:WoM and not Civ with magic.

It's like talking to a wall.  Stardock's vision for this whole series is a strategy game with RPG elements.  There's no ambiguity there.  Frogboy has put that right on the table in this thread.  You may want this game to be X, but the people who are making this game do not want to do that. 

I know you think you're offering constructive criticism, but what you're doing is straight-up whining.

The hilarious thing is to read people saying that removing poorly-functioning mechanics like encumbrance or dynasties or weapon-type-damage is dumbing the game down.  When in reality the game has become more complex and more challenging every step of the way.  FE was better than WoM, not because it was simpler, but because it was more fun, more challenging, and more interesting in every way.  And the same is true when you compare FE to LH.  LH has been clearly the better game since the very first beta was released.

can't comment on WOM - never played it, but in my opinion, LH is a lot better than FE. can't really follow the theadstarters line of reasoning (if there's actually a line of reasoning in that post). had to laugh hard at the "balance is destroyed" comment (point 6). the balance in FE was nowhere near what we have now in LH. there may still be some issues, but for the most part, it's easy enough to not use the handful of obvious exploits if you're looking for a more balanced game. at least you can no longer win the game without even settling your first city.

also, judging the beta version of a game by the amount of bugs is just dumb. 

don't get the comment about boring early game either. in fact, if i had to name one strategy game with an interesting early game, it would be LH.

Your reply is as good of a place to start as any.

My intention was not constructive criticism r.e LH with this last reply.  MY INTENTION was to put the designers on notice as to what a good number of us would like to see in the NEXT Elemental release, should we be fortunate enough to see it.  LH is effectively done at this point, so expecting change there is just not gonna happen, and it is, as many of you point out, LH is it's own game at this point.  I'm just laying the groundwork for the discussion r.e. the next version, if we are lucky enough to see one.

AND, this is why I didn't start a new thread, and instead buried my request into this thread, so that new potential customers wouldn't come to the forum and see 'Note to Designers: Next game should have' emblazoned as a forum topic, and wondering if LH sucks so bad that it needs another rework...

Many of the 'poorly functioning mechanics' you are referring to were selling points for the original E:WOM.  And my 'gripe' as it were is that these mechanics could have been tweaked into properly functioning mechanics, but instead were not fully realized.

As I remember, the #1 issue with Dynasties wasn't that they didn't work (they worked fine), but that the kids had really wild/OTT stats, something that with some work could have been brought into line.  Also, Dynasties make a great basis for advanced Diplomatic options.  NOW, the only reason I bother with diplomacy now is to make some cash and keep people off my back (non-agression pacts and selling tech for gildar) for as long as possible.  I still use it, but it's hollow at it's core.  Brad has commented already that this could be better, and IF we get another go/Elemental 4 maybe we will see something.  But giving up on Dynasties is a perfect example of an unfulfilled promise in this game.

LH is great for stability.  by comparison even E:WOM 1.4 had stability issues.  This is the #1 reason people don't play that game.  I recently, within the last month, re-installed E:WOM 1.0 and played it for a bit.  The frequent crashes were very annoying (all hail the auto save!), but the game plays differently.  The pacing is different, and there more of a sense of mystery in the game, partially thanks to not knowing/seeing where most things are at the start of the game (goodie huts, some resources, heroes), which changes your approach to things completely. 

Plus the Lore tree kept things interesting for most of the game.  By comparison, I think the Fame stat works OK (it has a lot of potential for other uses as a purchasing resource BTW, as someone alluded to in another thread recently), but since we now know where pretty much all of the monster lairs are, well that detracts from the mystery of the game, and eliminates a lot of the guesswork.

As a comparison, take Barbarians in Civ, or the Alien Lifeforms in Alpha Centauri.  You never really knew when they'd strike, and they had this annoying tendency to show up at the worst times.  The original E:WOM had this with monsters, but now that we KNOW where the lairs are, once they are removed from the map, it's almost a non-issue (random events aside).  I liked the idea of NOT knowing where the lairs werre, or where they had just cropped up, and having to actually explore to find them and take them out.  Note that this wasn't fully implemented in E:WOM, but we had discussions about this to 'home' the monsters and add to the 'problems to solve/need to find that monster lair' to the laundry list for empire management.

Another good example is Heroes versus Champions.  In E:WOM, you never really knew when these guys would show up.  In LH, it is spelled out explicitly (not counting quest acquisitions).  Better for game balance?  Perhaps.  More Challenging?  Not at all.  More mysterious?  Not even.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE.  Back in E:WOM, channeling cities in a given direction was much more flexible.  Want lots of material production?  Build lots of crafting structures.  Want lots of research?  Build a lot of studies.  NOW, it's one and done, and even the upgrades are one and done.  Cities are much more 'canned/unisex' now than they were in E:WOM.  And I had absolutely no issue with having to build hovels for my population.  Again, there was the balancing act to keep in mind.  NOW, it's simply 'maximize food production' and go, and maximize other structures when the upgrades show up.  I do remember doing the math r.e. libraries versus studies and other research structures and such in E:WOM, and actually putting thought into going big or going fast (study versus a bigger structure), or looking at my overall tech production versus building capacity, etc. and shifting building priorities on the fly.  In E:LH?  Yeah, just have three main decisions to make: Conclave, Fort, or City... everything else is pretty much 'build it when it becomes available', so it's a matter of WHEN and in what order, not IF you should build this instead of that...

Oh, and btw CIV had/has more flexibility on City focus than LH does, thanks to being able to send engineers out and convert farms to mines and such.  While E:WOM didn't have quite this flexibility it had more than we have now, which is my point.

The current design is great if your only goal is to build armies and go conquer (which, incidentally, take twice as long to build now since you have to build your city up OR build armies, which slows down pacing considerably).  In E:WOM, well how you built your cities was a much bigger deal, with a lot more decisions to consider IMHO.  Oh, and this incidentally magnifies the 'stack of doom' problem further, as having multiple stacks is now harder to do, especially in the early game.

This one single point (build and train) is one important thing that made E:WOM different from Civ, and one of the reasons why I say the game now feels more like Civ.

Did E:WOM have room for improvement?  Absolutely!  I was one of the modders that took a crack at this, and I will admit that I became frustrated when patches were coming out so fast that I had to re-do things multiple times as the files and core mechanics kept changing a bit, so I gave up.  Others made efforts to balance things, combat wise and such, and by 1.40 a lot of the wilder inconsistencies had been addressed.  But this is why I keep saying 'Take the Elemental Engine we have now, re-add everything from the beginning, apply the balancing tweaks that have been arrived at, and continue from there', in the next release.

And, btw, E:WOM 1.0 is almost a completely different game than E:WOM 1.4, thanks to the many changes between the two.  I think a lot of people are thinking of E:WOM 1.4 when they see E:WOM, when in fact many of us are referring to the ORIGINAL EWOM as the baseline.  Sure, E:WOM 1.4 adds a few things, and balance was better in some ways, but we lost some things along the way too...

Oh, and Global Mana Pools?  Lazy.  I put a LOT more thought into hero upgrades and spell casting when individual mana pools were in the equation..

Oh, and SINCE you brought up Encumberance, AGAIN, even though I said this WASN'T the core reason behind the letter, requiring a trait to wear armor is just lazy.  Especially when this can be addressed with penalties very effectively.  There are other very good ways to balance armor, that do not require soaking up valuable trait slots, using modifiers.  And, as has been pointed out, Elemental remains a game of Glass Cannons in many people's eyes, and armor isn't as effective as it could be thanks to things like swarm.  And, it is just stupid to say 'well, we know that you could just pull that chain shirt over your head, but you don't have a chain shirt license so you can't do that'.  But that's a topic that has been beat to death in another thread, and as I'm not focusing on LH at this point, but looking forward, the point is moot.

SOOOO, again, you LH lovers have nothing to worry about.  LH is almost gold at this point, so that's the game you will get. And LH isn't a bad game, it's just not the game many of us E:WOM Lovers types wanted from Stardock when we first bought into the franchise.

I'm looking towards the future, and holding Brad to the promise he put forward with E:WOM, with the considerably more stable engine we now have with E:LH, with some of the newer features being incorporated to improve on the design.

+1

Yeah, once you've steamrolled a couple of empires (on say a 10 empire map), it has usually become a foregone conclusion, and there isn't much point in finishing at that point.  There was a time I would play games through all the time, but investing another 8-16 hours to accomplish the obvious is not on my 'want list'.  If there are other elements to keep me interested it's another matter (i.e. I want to try this instead of that kinda stuff), but I'm not finding a lot of compelling reasons in Elemental these days.

A good example of what I'm alluding to is trying to maximize food production in civ, versus maximize produciton.  Sometimes you just want to see if you can make a size 26 city... not really feeling 'THAT' in Elemental.

But I digress.  Early game is what I enjoy the most, due to the 'how the heck am I going to get enough guys scraped together to kill that monster stack of doom' thing... but once my monster killing stack is built, well those stacks are awesome for conquering cities too, and then the tediousness sets in.

With all respects, I don't see how LH is more complex than the previous incarnations. The previous posters have pointed many of the reasons why is not like that. Again, is not about encumbrance. Encumbrance is yet another feature removed in a long list of concepts axed. The drop that floods the cup if you want to say in that way.

Perhaps Stardock plan has always been to make a simple strategy game, but what I remember reading when I preordered E:WoM was a very complete game with lots of features that interacted with each other and allowed to play it in many different styles. What we have now is an ok game with a lot less features that is advancing more and more towards abstraction, which in my opinión is not good. Having weird abstractions forcing you to make "interesting strategic choices" does not look like my idea of fun (yes, I said MY idea of fun, because I am giving my opinión and am not trying to evangelize).

However, it seems very strange to me that a game that was not supposed to be a very complete game had as many features as E:WoM, and it seems very logical to me to say that this game is simply not like E:WoM. Will I commit suicide because that's not the game I hoped for? Not at all, but I feel like expressing it here in the fórums.

To put in a short way: My humble opinión is that the game continues to lose features that really made the difference and made it stand on its own against other games, not only 4x/TBS/RPG games, but games in general. During this process the game has become a "me too" game. An enjoyable one and pretty cool, but very far from its original objective.

E:WoM was a complex, shallow strategy game.

LH is a far less complex, deeper strategy game.

Well put.

More summons ("warring elemental"s) > less dark pop-ups.  I guess I'm looking forward to the DLC's?

While I'm not going to question whether they worked flawlessly in M:TW2 (never played that game), saying they didn't work at all isn't true.  They produced offspring, which gave you more generals/spellcasters for your armies.  My kids saw a lot of action in Elemental, and made great combat spell platforms.  Sure, a lot of the other uses for dynasties was neglected, no one is disupting that, but again this could have been addressed with continued work on the concept, rather than just abandoning it.  As Brad has said, Diplomacy is his one nagging issue he'd love to improve somehow, and Dynasties just happen to dovetail into this nicely.

Just go back to the original EWOM threads, and note all of the 'OOM/game is broken/I quit threads'.  Not questioning that YOU hated the game, but others really wanted to love it, but expected better from Stardock quality/bug wise.  #1 could be an exaggeration on my part, but based on the I quit threads, I don't really think so.

I specifically remember building multiple libraries, or multiple workshops, or arcane libraries, and having to decide on some balance for these.  Each provides +1 to their repsective discipline, plus there was the whole 'Hosten's Library adds 25% to Lore' and other structures thing, which factored into those +1's.  So many buildings to build, so little time...  Now, you build just one and maybe upgrade it later.

Mind you, I like the lumber mills in LH, but again you build just 1, and you are stupid not to build one if you can.  With population caps, well you might not even have the population to man said lumber mill, but we don't have those anymore.  Not sure if that is a late E:WOM or early E:FE innovation though, but I loved the population pool concept (with appropriate balancing of course).

All global mana does is encourage you to make one huge mana pool.  Once the mana gravy train is rolling, the only thing I worry about is if I have some huge 500 point spell (read: cure plague) to cast, as I can generally cast any spell I need to.  Under the Old system, whether a hero could even cast a spell depended on the size of his individual mana pool, plus they took time to regenerate, so I found myself having to think about whether a given stack had any mana to use, or if I should send a different stack/caster, who had more mana available. 

AND, you had a 'mana cap' based on the total size of your individual mana pools.  We have no mana cap whatsoever anymore...

Do note the multiple 'I have thousands of mana points' posts in the LH discussion.  These generally go 'I bank mana until the end game, and then go hog wild with spells as I devastate/cripple opponents with effectively unrestricted spellcasting'.  When we had individual mana pools, this never happened, as you had to regenerate said individual mana pools between bouts, or go in short of mana.

Global Mana augments the stack of doom (makes it even more OTT), as one or two spellcasters in the back can go spell crazy if they want, as long as the pool is large.  In the old system, they only had their own mana to work with, which while said pools could get rather large at higher levels of experience, weren't anywhere near the size of pools I'm seeing now.

As far as global spells and individual mana pools, I've covered this already.  The developers already had the 'send mana to another caster' mechanic implemented for expensive global spells with channeling, although said global spells were fairly cheap so usually a Sov could handle it on his/her own, but with balancing this intended result could have been brought to fruition.  Plus, these days in LH, I don't find myself casting many combat spells, as combat units are so effective.  Bow armed Sovs work well as fire support in the early game, except against Bacco of course, but that's a minor issue.  They do need screening units, but as you can make some pretty powerful units, again spells aren't as important/have as great an influence as they used to be.  While I do use a few ranged spells in LH combat from time to time, they aren't the order of the day, and I used them A LOT in E:WOM 1.0.

Sure, the formulas for individual mana pools needed some tweaking, but we were 80% of the way there, but tossed the concept instead because 'Using Channeling for global spells was weird'.  The one change I'd make is a 'use or lose' philosophy for channeled mana, and a 'Strategic Use Only for channeled mana' requirement, but that's just me, and there are other solutions.

Before, I had issues to face r.e. encumberance.  I specifically remember having to balance weight issues so I could use that really heavy double axe with Bacco, and taking a pass on heavier armors just so I COULD use said axe.  Plus augmenting his carrying capacity accordingly to help with the defensive situation (full plate was still out of the question though).  While the item in question (double axe) was unique, this forced me into an 'Offense versus Defense' quandry with this particular unit. 

Encumberance accomplished this nicely, and gave players flexibility as to how they would deal with it (lighter armor bigger weapon or vice versa?).  Again, we still had balancing to to, but we were mostly there.  And with all of the traits already in the game, soaking valuable slots up with armor traits was a step backward IMHO, especially as you haven't addressed the fundamental question 'why can't you just put the chain shirt on anyways?'.  As to my lazy comment, Encumberance had multiple values associated with it, a trait has considerably fewer.  So going the trait route was the 'easy way out', and we lose out on an interesting game mechanic in the process, that incidentally WAS working and influencing unit designs and what each Champion/Sov could pack around with them.  Remember that Encumberance focused on more than just armor...

If encumberance flat out didn't work, I'd agree with you.  But it worked quite well, and while it could always be better it was just another implementation that made Elemental cool, and more immersive.  Traits aren't immersive.  Weighing the pros and cons of how heavy something is versus the benefit?  That's a thinking man's game...

 

Can't agree with you at all there, I had a LOT of thinking to do in E:WOM.  Do I want more speed for a unit, or more Essence?  What about attack strength?  I want another spellcaster, how do I accomplish that and where do I find another Essence potion to get him started? Sure, some of these things were item related, but stat points and where to apply them had a direct and immediate impact on how units functioned.  And mana wasn't any more free than it is now.  Sovs and other spellcasters still relied on shards for their mana regeneration rate, and again had to choose between spells (mana) and martial disciplines for their stat points.  LOTS of stuff to think about right there. 

Do I risk sending units out to track down new heroes, and perhaps conquer an enemy empire or two, or will powerful hordes of monsters show up while they are gone?  Sure, we still have powerful stacks of monsters in E:LH, but you KNOW where they are... and in E:WOM, this was never a given.  Plus, large enemy stacks had this annoying tendency to show up unannounced, which I don't see as much in E:LH (the unannounced part)

Do I risk sending my heroes halfway across the world trying to recruit champions, and leave my cities undefended?  Sure the teleport mechanic helped with this, but Mana wasn't as readily available with individual mana pools, and many spellcasting heroes didn't have enough mana to cast this spell in the first place, or the ability for that matter.  AND, the enemy empires also had teleport, so (if the AI had been buffed) they could have reacted in a similar fashion (teleport home when the empire was in danger).  Was teleport a 'cheat' of sorts?  Probably.  But it made E:WOM unique, and added another strategic problem to consider, as there were only one of you and 8-10 opponents that could use the same tactic simultaneously against you...

The only question I think about with Global mana is whether I have mana available or not, instead of which units have mana and how do I get them to where I need them?  And E:WOM had limitations for sure, just as E:LH does.  But you aren't thinking in the proper context.  E:WOM was never balanced to the degree that E:LH has been combat wise, so if you lift some of the values we've arrived at, and drop them into the E:WOM setting, well you'd see a much better balance game than the one you experienced back in the day.

Also remember that I took advantage of several mods back then, thich took Elemental from a nice game to a fun game.  Kenata's weapons mods, Heavenfall's stuff, and a number of other mods completely changed the E:WOM 1.11 experience, not to mention later iterations (their mods came out during the initial patch flurry), which made Elemental a fun game.  Incidentally, some of the weapon abilities you guys now have in E:LH? Thank Kenata and the other modders for creating some of them, as said modders introduced them in E:WOM...

And remember Elemental's roots.  You'll note that in Galactic Civilizations, how you build your empire is as intriguing and intricate as building your fleet.  With E:LH, the focus has shifted from Empire/Kingdom building to Unit design.  Sure, this is a 4x game, but Empire building is what a LOT of us love about these games.  Combat is fun too, but city design decisions are a huge deal to us.  And I'm sorry, we lost a lot of that with E:LH.  As I said before, I doubt I'll ever have that 'how to I get this city to level 26' moment in Elemental, because cities only have one way to go (once the Conclave/Fort/City route has been decided, which you can't change later btw).  Sure, that initial decision is important, but again, your path is chosen for you before you begin once you've made it.

And, again, I don't know why you are bothering.  You obviously have the game you want in LH.  Knock yourself out.  I'm sure I'll be playing it too.  But my work is still ahead of me, that being convincing the team to give a good number of us the E:WOM game WE want to see.  You don't have to come along for the ride, and you certainly don't have to play this other game I'm shooting for.  It's a free world, after all!

Disagree, plain and simple. I liked the original EWOM somewhat, although I didn't play it much after beta. FE was far better then EWOM and in my honest opinion, LH is the best of the three. I like it. Some of the things you want can be fixed. Monsters can be made to be more random for example, and stronger. You can make it so that lairs respawn in different spots so even if you destroy a lair, one might pop up some where else.

Other things maybe can't be brought back but if some of you would like to come talk about it in my immersion thread then maybe I can come up with some ideas to bring some stuff back or change some of the stuff to what you are hoping for. I wont be able to do it unless people come and have dialogue with me though, I get a lot of my ideas from talking to others and reading what people want.