Mtn_Man

Then I wonder why it's telling me $20? But even $10 is more expensive than necessary. First-class mail could get a boxed game to you for under $3.

[quote who="niteshade6" reply="27" id="2716458"]Usually when people complain about AI they aren't really complaining about difficulty level. Most people don't want an AI that consistently does incredibly stupid things but makes up for it by magically always having 10 times as many troops as you...[/quote] I remember the AI in Black & White being horrifically unfair in this respect. In that game, you played the role of a god who was represented by a disembodied hand (your cur

[quote who="Raven X" reply="83" id="2715735"]The way things are set up now in tactical battles I notice something ...hmm, weird. Here's how it goes. You have two "Units" facing off. Unit "A" has 20 soldiers in it. Unit "B" has 15 soldiers in it. When one unit attacks another one guy from each unit steps up to fight while the rest just stand back and do nothing. Having battles happen that way means that the more units you have the longer the battle will take and as we all know there were/are t

I pre-ordered yesterday and immediately received a message in my inbox confirming the order. If you didn't get one then I suggest you double check with Stardock to make sure everything went through O.K.

I'd be perfectly happy with cheap and reliable first-class mail because $20 for shipping is absurd. At that price they should guarantee next-day delivery.

[quote who="klaxton499" reply="7" id="2716346"]The developer Gas Powered Games quietly sat in the background working on their next title.[/quote] Doesn't surprise me. I lost a lot of respect for Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games when they released Supreme Commander with broken sound code that made the game unplayable on certain popular hardware configurations (primarily any system using a Creative sound card), and instead of fixing the problem, they at first refused to acknowle

Out curiosity, why is shipping so outrageously expensive? I was going to buy the digital download plus the box copy since they're advertised as the same price, and then I got slapped in the face with a $20 shipping charge! I went with just the digital download instead and figured I'll pick up an archival DVD later (assuming it's not also saddled with ridiculously high shipping costs).

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="3" id="2716303"]Sins of a Solar Empire, however, was developed by Ironclad Games and not Stardock - it was a close partnership and Stardock was involved more heavily than a typical publisher is with the developer, and one of the big reasons for the partnership is that Ironclad shares Stardock's ideals - which is probably why people keep confusing them a bit Not a knock on Stardock, just giving Ironclad credit where it's due, it's a bit sad to see it r

I, too, noticed the repeated entries in the technology window. For instance, this shows "Unlocks Hammers" twice in the lower right pane: http://www.draginol.com/images2009/ElementalGamePlayExample_E7AB/image_45.png Not sure if this is a bug or if it unlocks two different types of hammers.

Similarly, I bought Sins of a Solar Empire on a whim based on precious little information beyond the fact that it was a slower-paced, thinking-man's RTS and that Stardock had an unimpeachable reputation. I haven't regretted that decision in the least, and I trust Stardock to deliver when it comes to Elemental.

I thought the one-day early release was for anybody who pre-ordered the digital copy.

I'd like to see this. It'd be a great way to get my Elemental fanboy on.

The cool thing is that I just found out about this game a few days ago, so my wait time until release is really short. :D

Yes please.

[quote who="Mobella" reply="7" id="2715825"] Quoting Mtn_Man, reply 5Also consider that this game isn't just about exploring and questing. There is a definite end-game goal of meeting one of the four victory conditions, and you'll be battling against opponents with the same goal, so you won't want to dawdle. not that im terribly concerned, but is there perhaps a "quest mode" that doesnt take into account an endgame? just aimlessly building cities, questing, etc.?[/quote]

And what makes you so sure that Stardock hasn't done that? Brad only said that the AI wasn't where he wanted it two-weeks ago. That's a lot different than saying that the AI was non-existent or completely untested at that time, which is what you're inferring. My guess is that he's been adding the final touches to a largely finished AI and not that he's spent the past two-weeks creating it from scratch.

Ah, here's the journal: https://forums.elementalgame.com/390262 August 5, 2010: ' This weekend I have to really get on the AI. It’s still nowhere near where I want it to be for release. Heck, it doesn’t even do the “Your civilization makes me laugh, give us 50 gold or we’ll crush you!” type stuff. ' -Frogboy He never said that the AI is "nowhere close to being ready", he said it's no

[quote who="niteshade6" reply="4" id="2715580"]I wouldn't necessarily expect the elemental AI to be any better on release, there was a very recent developer journal saying that it's nowhere close to being ready.[/quote] Not exactly. Brad Wardell said he will continue to improve the AI through the life-cycle of the game simply because he'll become better at playing it, so he'll want to code those new strategies into the AI. As far as I know, he never said that the current A

Also consider that this game isn't just about exploring and questing. There is a definite end-game goal of meeting one of the four victory conditions, and you'll be battling against opponents with the same goal, so you won't want to dawdle.

[quote who="Tegga21" reply="23" id="2715592"]I'm assuming (like they've repeatedly said) that the beta's performance and the release day 0 will be VERY different.[/quote] That's almost always the case since development code tends to have a lot of error reporting and debugging code that slows down program execution. Part of the optimization process is removing the bulk of that code and then running the whole code through optimization tools that can help developers identify where