abomination5

[quote who="Rosco_P" reply="6" id="2745748"] Quoting joasoze, reply 5The bad thing here is that I see nothing in the game that stops infinite city spamming Well, for one, on a finite sized map, there is only so much space in which to build these cities. It also means, you have to put more into defending those cities, so that's more resources tied up. You also may spread yourself thin, which means those cities are more vulnerable to being taken over. Plus, if

I've gone back to HOMM 3 and Dominions 3 until Elemental gets a few more patches. Dominions 3 is an amazing game if you've never played it. Obviously there is a demo so check if it's your style before you buy. There are no tactical battles. Basically, you give orders to your troops and they automatically duke it out. You can watch the battles and it can be pretty fun to do so. Giant battles between undead and huge gorilla men anyone? It's definitely a deep and complex strategy game. T

1. AI 2. Tactical combat balanced and fun 3. Magic balanced and fun

The reason that the forums may have seemed to be filled with a lot of 'yes men' was because any thread that claimed the game was being rushed out the door was locked. It was basically a taboo subject. Personally, I half believed the game was going to be finished based on Brad's remarks that the development build was lightyears ahead of beta 4. Although, the fact that they were locking these kind of threads came across as suspicious and insecure.

[quote who="rancmiller" reply="1" id="2737408"]100% agree... Also... why cant i destroy cities? On tiny maps the AI just builds allot of small cities next to my borders and sometimes between two of my major cities... SO i just have to conquere them and i get stuck with a small crappy city i rather burn![/quote] You can. Research the warfare tech that allows you to raze cities. Click 'more' on the city UI and then raze.<

[quote who="ElradV" reply="2" id="2737509"]I found that +1 speed is there regardless of if you have Great Warrior or not. Loaded variations with and without great warrior, both leaders had: On map combat speed 2 listed. In battle 3.0 combat speed[/quote] I believe it works for trained units, not the sovereign.

[quote who="cwg009" reply="4" id="2734433"]My biggest issue is that there needs to be more transparency on what some of the abilities even do. For example civilized is suppose to make it cheaper to build a city, but as far as I can tell there is no cost for that other than the pioneer unit. Death magic is supposed to give units +10 hp but I can't tell if it's even working or how to get it working. Better descriptions or tool tips explaining the actual mechanics behind all the abilities would

Organized and tracker are good. The research points options are just too expensive to justify to me (if you have left over points they are fine). Some of the weaknesses are nice, especially the ones that have no effect as long as you stay out of cities. Most of the spell books are useless because of weak magic. The best spell in the game is teleport. The only real reason to take spell books is for summons. I like taking a sovereign with high wis (for teleport) dex, con

[quote who="Sentinemodo" reply="8" id="2734375"]I go for easy kill take the sovereing that get two sentinels at start, match it with Tarth kingdom, and roll over any city you find. Btw, sometimes they are escaping with a pioneer and drop a city anywhere outside the limit. In that situation I miss the option to raze it. I want a RAZE CITY option.[/quote] You can still raze cities if you have the right warfare tech.

[quote who="Dual_CoRed" reply="1" id="2731038"]Kind of weak. It's possible to declare war on a neighboring civ and just waltz your sovereign into their city. Also, enemy AI like to leave their sovereigns exposed. I wiped out 3 of the 5 civs I played against in about 10 minutes just whacking their unprotected sov's.[/quote] Same here. The AI is very passive and leaves the sovereign wandering by himself.

There is a new article up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun noting that the gamer's bill of rights is no longer found on its website. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with what some would call a premature release of Elemental but they seem to think so. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/25/stardock-rescind-own-bill-of-rights/

The patch notes didn't address much (if anything) here. I like this review. I agree with most of what you've said. The game is definitely fun but there are a lot of issues. I've always disliked the color scheme/aesthetics of the UI but surprisingly I've never really seen that many complaints. As you said, it feels very bland to me. Although the improvements since the beta are very nice.

[quote who="kryo" reply="3" id="2727326"]Minor cities can't levelup. We're either going to make that clearer in-game or remove the limitation.[/quote] I always figured this was a bug in the beta. Once the town is captured it should level up normal in my opinion.

I'm not sure if it's consider a bug but some of the base units are slightly more powerful than custom ones.

I believe general sets the difficulty of the monsters in the world.

So glad to hear tactical battles are eventually coming back to MP. Definitely buying a second copy for multiplayer after this happens.

Great post! Got a laugh out of me.

There may be some in the campaign (haven't tried it yet) but in the normal game the only thing I can think of is unit selection dialog. You aren't really missing much there.

Join any server and type /join #elemental.

Prepare for liftoff!

Whoohoo! Definitely staying up until release! Thanks Frogboy!

Frogboy, Thanks for addressing some of the issues concerning Elemental multiplayer. The main thing I wanted to comment on here is the lack of tactical battles. I was going to buy a few copies of this game for my home but now that I hear this there is no way I can do that. I mostly intend to play Elemental on LAN. I may jump online every now and then but I'll be primarily playing with people I know in the same room. We've played a good amount of HOMM

I wouldn't call it "dumbed down" either. From what he said it's just streamlining the game for multiplayer. I know gamers have a fear of the word "streamlining." If I was playing online against strangers I would probably want to use the balanced version but if I'm on my LAN I'd probably want the single player version. Hopefully it's optional.

These are very good ideas, although most of them have been mentioned before. I hope the developers get a chance to see this thread. I especially would like to see initiative and trainable special abilities. Hopefully even special abilities which are faction specific.

How about a glowing blue glyph under summoned units instead of green shading?