Austinvn

Regarding the OP, the big question for me is: rather than having these abilities inherent to certain units, can we link them to equipment? i.e. every unit I equip with a mount gains the "charge" ability? This would open the door to a massive amount of unit customization; instead of equipment merely giving stat bonuses, many items could link to one or more abilities - claymore allows "cleave," dagger allows "backstab," some magic ring allows "minor heal," and so on - you could mix and match th

[quote]i think that instead of a single unit being built out of having a certain building, i think that building should give you traits you can add to the units you create. for instance i don't like having dungeon master units, these are units that are out of my control to make. they are just there. i want to be able to assign traits to units, much like the scout, or messenger kit. then call them what i want and make them look like what i want. in sh

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="9" id="2676155"]I agree that in the future we'll unlock features sooner rather than later. [/quote] Sounds like a good idea. Don't get me wrong, the incredibly quick progress and rapid changes the beta is undergoing proves what you guys can accomplish in a short amount of time - I just worry that we, the testers, won't have a whole lot of time to play with all the new (at least to us) features you're implementing, test them, break them, and

[quote who="edpfister" reply="37" id="2676285"] [quote]I like the idea that faster ranged units could reek havoc on a for that relied strictly on slower higher offensive/defense units.. this provides for more depth think fast moving longbow unit vs full blown knight in armor..[/quote] I agree with this but not the implementation. How this should work is you or the opponent initiates tactical combat. Archers fire 1 or 2 times or whatever is appropriate then retreat fro

This is far, far too powerful - with just a bow and terrible equipment otherwise (something like 10 attack, 4 defense, 20 hp), my sovereign can easily kill an 80 attack/40 defense/150 hp drake with no risk or even damage to himself. Granted extreme examples such as that won't be possible when it's fixed to not ignore armor (I assume that has to be a bug), but even so it's just a bad idea to give free damage without risk of retribution. Archers can weaken and even kill units that have no chanc

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="1" id="2672074"]It is very confusing. Spell Points are what's used to turn an "Available" spell into a "Known" spell, and you have to have all the Spell Points required for a spell at the one time. Spells are learned by opening the Sovereign's Spells tab and then click on the first icon to open the spellbook. Mana is what you use to cast spells that are "Known", and you find your total and current Mana by selecting your Sovereign without any oth

[quote who="rossanderson48" reply="41" id="2675218"]So, no I don't expect the MP game to be much as far as the Empire building game goes. I've seen the MP elements and they are arena battles and some small capture the flag like pvp mp games.[/quote] I don't mean to offend, but I don't think you fully understand what Elemental's multiplayer is supposed to be. Yes, it will supposedly include some odd variations like arena mode, but it will also support the same epic empire-building game

Well, at the moment the balance is.. unfinished, so it's hard to predict what will be good choices in the end. Great warriors is a good example, it basically doubles the combat speed of trained units (can't remember if it affects sovereign/champions), but at such a cost you can't get much else - it's hard to fit in, but if you do no one's going to be able to match you with a standard military. Not that it matters when your sovereign can stomp the AIs singlehandedly, but hypothetically speakin

Dominions 3 had an awesome event where a party of high level, well equipped adventurers decided to overthrow the evil tyrant (that would be you) and seize control of one of your provinces. You typically end up raising a massive army of redshirts to overwhelm the elite adventurers in a hilarious reversal of typical RPG play - something like that would be perfect in Elemental. The adventurers could spawn near a city (not the capital) and try to capture it, or just settle a new city within your

Having units with orders move at the end of turn isn't inherently bad, but the interface just doesn't support it - if you're going to have a bunch of units with orders that just haven't moved yet standing around, there really needs to be a way to pick out the units without orders, like the aforementioned "next idle unit" button or an automatic cycling of all idle units like Civ4 does. I'm not bothered by having a dozen units I gave orders to last turn sitting around with full moves l

[quote who="Eisenhund" reply="102" id="2673182"]Why move to a city and start a medieval life if there isn’t land to grow crops, a military to protect you, or work opportunities (which I’d include trade in)? “They have a really nice library there.” That’s neat and all but how is this important to 80 percent of the illiterate population?[/quote] Hate to nitpick, but you don't actually get prestige from libraries or any similar res

Like above posts say, all sovereigns are mages and all sovereigns are warriors, but not necessarily good ones. Sure your 5 int sov can cast a spell, but it's not nearly as effective as a 15 int sov's spells - and your 5 dex sov can wear plate, but it's not nearly as effective as a 15 dex sov's plate. Theoretically, it should be balanced - the spells of a warrior-sovereign with 5 int should be as bad as the defense of a mage-sovereign with 5 dex. Now the numbe

Fixed definitely, scaling of any amount kills the game's aesthetics: goodbye immersion and RPG-like fantasy world, hello chess board. There's not even any need for scaling - as Raven X says, that's what the cloth map is for! You already have two separate systems that integrate together beautifully; cloth map for gameplay, with easy identification of cities/units/terrain/etc, full graphics for aesthetics. That being said, I've got nothing against keeping the option there for all you fo

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="3" id="2665897"]My issue is the (undocumented) SoV death and Game ending Loss. It seems after 2 SoV deaths, while I still have a growing City. It can be frustrating when you get caught "pants down."[/quote] Forgive me if I'm pointing out something obvious you already know, but.. you are aware that they've changed it so losing a fight ("using some of your power to escape a battle") causes essence loss, and you permanently die (lose the game) if you lose

[quote who="Vallu751" reply="8" id="2665359"] Quoting Peace Phoenix, reply 7 It isn't the same to be able to teleport in your territory (defensive move) vs teleport into ennemy territory (like you did in HOMM3) It's not quite as powerful, but it can still be used offensively. You can teleport your army to a border hex and attack anything near the border. At least in Civ, you could take over cities this way. And besides, the true fear here is whether there will b

[quote who="delad" reply="19" id="2664627"]my sovereign ran out of essence wayyyyy too fast. The only way to gain experience was to best beasties but i chose Principea (whatever her name is, the specialist magician) and that was not going to happen with her. So, what transpired was I would get my ass handed to me by anything that was capable of movement and i would run low on essence founding a city and a garden. I would be left with 2/3 essence points and no way of building it back up. lots

Maximum mana is based on your essence; if you expended essence (revitalizing land so a city can be founded, losing and escaping from a battle, saving the wolf cubs, etc) you'll have less max mana. Solution: get more essence when you level up. This is entirely separate from spending mana on spells, which will then regenerate on its own. Not sure that's clear, let me give an example just to be sure: You have 20 essence, therefore you have 20/20 mana. If you spend 5 mana on a tel

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="4" id="2662151"]I have always found those pics of ogres and trolls too similar. Looks very promising. [/quote] Mythologically speaking, there's little to no difference between Trolls and Ogres - Trolls are essentially the Norse equivalent of the English Ogre. Although if Elemental means to use both terms and have a major distinction between the two species (one is bigger/rarer/etc than the other is not a major distincti

Even in Elemental's current beta, which is very incomplete, there's plenty to do from turn 1 - you are not just sitting around waiting for a technology to research/troop to train/etc. before the fun can begin (like in Civ). In fact, you don't even need to found a city right away - your sovereign is quite capable of adventuring, hiring allies, taking on basic quests, and grabbing lots of Civ-style "goody huts" right from turn 1, no waiting involved. Also the troops you can bui

I find it fun now, call me crazy but I even found the old Beta 1's fun. However that's "fun" in a limited sense - fun to play for a while, but then you run out of things to do because many features just aren't there yet, so you go post on the forums about what you think the game needs - fun at first but replay is limited. As a point of reference this already puts Elemental above most other games out there for me - many fully finished games don't have the depth that the beta has already -

I'd honestly love to see Elves and Dwarves and Orcs and such, I'm not yet sick of classic Tolkienesque fantasy and probably never will be, so I'd like Elemental even more if included more "generic" sandbox fantasy. But this is Brad/Stardock's game, they're free to create their own unique lore even if you don't like it (personally I'm reserving judgement - we haven't even seen the Empires yet, this game should have two very distinct factions in the end, and that will improve it I thi

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="23" id="2653687"] I like this. Adventurers would be a 'faction' and killing them (and unsuccessful quest completion, etc.) progressively drops your standing with them: -their hiring cost increases, and cost to be hired by any enemies of yours decreases -they refuse to be hired -they avoid you -they attack you Treating them well (hiring, equipping, successful quests, etc.) increases you

[quote who="Star20" reply="23" id="2655730"]I am confused, is this food output of the garden the same? And if so, has the housing improved so much to balance the lack of gardens out?[/quote] He also has an oasis, don't those produce food? (Never managed to claim one, no idea). Also could have other cities producing food to support his housing, we really don't know.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="6" id="2655651"] Quoting tesb, reply 3are you going to fix the inorganic look problem in the future? i mean: 1) the regular ground cover between buildings 2) adjectancy 3) merging of buildings etc. otherwise it looks good, release the new beta already 1. Yes. 2. I'm not sure what you mean. We do want to have buildings that if placed adja

I do sympathize, the combat is pretty awful right now - very "civilization," compare the numbers, send a unit in and the game rolls a dice. But it doesn't bother me yet, keep in mind that this is not the tactical combat beta, I don't expect them to even touch combat 'til Beta 3. There is a point to this beta and it's not combat, it's everything else - graphics and stability and economy and (eventually) magic, diplomacy, etc etc. I might question how well we can reall