Spitz

I know this is one in a sea of posts suggesting ways to change essence, but I don't think I've seen this particular idea yet, so. . . Essence should be the binary ability to utilize magic in the world. It should be used to unlock the magical potential of heroes and shards. Heroes with their magical abilities unlocked should have spellcasting ability then determined by their intelligence and wisdom alone. If a hero dies, the essence returns to the channeler, so a channele

Whenever I exit the program from the main menu, I get a warning after exiting that the program has stopped responding and a crash log. This doesn't cause a problem with my play, but I thought the crash log might be useful, so. . .

Same problem. Vista, GeForce 8800 GTS, didn't happen before .806 for me. Same issue is also addressed in this thread . My DxDiag . Screenshots: First - Second - Third - <a href="http://dl.d

Since the front splash page (www.elementalgame.com) is where you make your first impression for people who are interested in the game, I'd like to make a few humble suggestions for a few of those sentences. "The Sorceress Procipinee has claimed your northern cities as being part of her domain" --> "The Sorceress Procipinee has claimed your northern cities as part of her domain" "Design your sovereign in terms of talents, class, even what he (or she)

I suspect that this is a suggestion that's already in the works, but many creature entries in the Hiergamenon mention that their body parts are prized by alchemists. I'd like to see those parts, once they're in the game and dropping, used not just as salable items for gold, but reagents in the alchemical creation of items and potions of power. Perhaps even spell reagents. Alchemy tech would certainly spice up the magical technology tree.

I'd like to suggest a UI interface improvement. When the cursor is left for 1 second over something, the infocard should popup just above the hovered character or item, instead of always in the bottom right of the screen. Along the bottom edge of the infocard, place a small row of buttons with the most common actions applicable to that character/object. Allow the infocard/buttons to persist if the cursor is moved onto them. For example: I see a new NPC, I hover the m

"Bring forth a" needs a space between "forth" and "a" on the description of the summon familiar spell for both the infocard and the spellbook.

Ditto. Same circumstances.

First of all, .806 is way more stable and fun. The first version I've actually found playable pain-free. Wonderful improvements. Two quest-related spelling errors noted in the few minutes I spent with it tonight: The rats in the basement quest: "Rat's are my specialty!" Should have no apostrophe between the rat and the s. The helping the she-wolf give birth in the dark cave quest: The resulting Ebbenwolves that join your army's infocard should u

I've already voted with my money by preordering and participating in the beta. Stardock has a impeccable record of sticking with their games and continuing to update and tweak after release, so I'm completely unconcerned for myself. I was simply agreeing with Denryu that the methodology of the beta has made my confidence an act of faith, because I haven't played a representative sample of what the final product will be like yet. I also am not referring to graphics, but to complete gam

I'd like to second those sentiments. I really, really want this game to go gold in a state that will bring in the high Metacritic scores. I'm a big fan of Stardock's work and am taking it on faith that the internal betas are much more tested/proofread/polished/stable than what we see in the public beta. I'd feel terrible if a game with this much promise got poor reviews from insufficient polish.

On paper: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson E-book on my iPod: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="17" id="2673506"]I'm using the Microsoft Optical mouse (though it's not wireless) without an issue. I'll put it on the list of things to look at. Not sure we can really do much about a driver issue though.[/quote] Thanks so much for the reply, Frogboy. It's not a driver issue, I believe; using the wrong drivers is just a work-around. It's related to post #8 above, and only effects mice that have a scroll wheel that spin

Agreed. Particularly the eject unit from group/city icons when playing at 1680x1050 resolution.

As much as I am eagerly anticipating the tactical battles, I applaud your prioritization of stability. I also envy your smooth zooming in the video. May I hope that the zooming problem with smooth-scrolling mice will be fixed in this version?

Strangely, didn't generate the post-crash .zip file. Got a window warning of an invalid dx call. Here's the link to the debug.err .

I'd like to be able to set units produced in a city to rally to another city, point, or army. It would be even nicer to set the rally differently for different units in the city's building queue A patrol function would also be lovely, given the function of fog-of-war in this game. The original Empire Deluxe (Civ's granddaddy) had this, it would be nice to see it return.

I'm posting this separately, because I want to keep the initial post a summary of the magic system. In my opinion, six different types of resources influencing spell casting is too many. My main suggestion would be to do away with spell points. Use either mana or research points as the resource to learn new spells. At a bare minimum, change the name, the current one is confusing in the context of 6 resources influencing magic. I believe I've seen the Frogish Lead

I've been in the beta from the beginning, although I'll admit I haven't played much until recently because I've been insufficiently pain tolerant and the zooming bug for smooth-scrolling mice makes playing difficult. Anyway, the magic system is one of the things being worked on at present, and I certainly feel it needs work. To foster and encourage this conversation, I wanted to summarize the current system as I understand it, both so that my misunderstandings can be corrected and so

Name: Raise Mountain Strategic Knowledge Req: 18 Mana: 18 Shards: Earth Effect: Raises a mountain where a hill has been, making the square impassable to non-flying, non-tunneling, non-phased, non-teleporting unit movement. Must be used on an existing hill. Book: Earth Notes: A way of altering the world to create defenses and limit movement. Cheaper than flood, requires earth instead of mastery magic. &n

I actually really like the raise land spell. It has a much cooler, magical and powerful feel to it than just walking across water. I'd just like to see a more powerful version of it at higher intelligence levels to allow the creation of mountains. You should also eventually be able to sink land below water. Not to mention a strategic AoE spell to protect land from alteration. Water-walking should actually be a more powerful spell, since it allows you to reach new are

I also think using the right-hand page for spell description is wasted space. I'd rather see a pop-up infocard on clicking or mousing over the spell. Also, I'd like tabs to sort by spell class, or spell book, or learned vs. unlearned. Damage spells need to have some indication of how much damage they do.

The city HUD could supply more useful information. A city's prestige and open squares and resources are far less important to me to know at a glance than what's it's building and training at the moment and how close they are to completion.

[quote quoting="post"] Paul and I decided that we really wanted players to be able to get a dog somehow during the course of the game. Which reminds me, we need a way to name units. [/quote] Nethack flashback! Scroll of taming, anyone?

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="6" id="2671668"]Heh, I just made it so that monsters of different kinds will attach one another. This ought to be interesting.[/quote] Love that idea. It would also be neat to have monsters of a particular type have a prey preference tree, so they seek their preferred prey first, if none of those are around, they seek prey number two. Somewhere on each tree should be player-types. So, say Darklings love wolf meat. A sm