Demiansky

[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="29" id="2724218"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 27 As far as I know, nothing about Elemental thus far has violated the Gamer's Bill of Rights, except, perhaps, that a game should be finished before it is sold. That's a pretty big "except", in my opinion. [/quote] Yeah, I should have left the part in about playability being debatable. In the most minimal sense of the term, "playable" could mean that yo

[quote who="NiknudStunod" reply="26" id="2724145"]I posted my thoughts on this game and it was nuked within 2 minutes of it getting posted. I thought I was being completely fair and honest with my review and even linked "the gamer bill of rights" that stardock posted 2 years ago. There is nothing about this game that is even remotely fun and to rely on the player base to give this game any meaningful content is just a cardinal sin in my book. I vowed that I would never buy a

[quote who="Mtn_Man" reply="6" id="2723921"] Quoting Werewindlefr, reply 5 ...the reviews will most likely be quite negative... Brad says that he "would be very surprised if the reviews of Elemental are negative". [/quote] I'm sad to say that Elemental will almost certainly get bad reviews from mainstream sources. My review? Most certainly bad, even by newly released game standards. Not only will it have to

If you have something else interesting to do, shelve Elemental. I played for about 4 hours and found it quite a bit inferior to what I was anticipating when I heard of the project well over a year ago. At the moment, the various game features do a poor job at "connecting," if that makes sense. I, personally, will be coming back in 60 days.

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="39" id="2723116"] It is impossible to not have expectations of a game you are looking forward to, and one that is being made by good people (I think Stardock has great people). But I feel really disappointed too. You need to make sure that the core components are in at release. And even though CivIV's random map generation is not perfect, it doesn't give the exact same terrain and starting positions. On hindsight, not having a "

Ahh bugger. Finished downloading but not it's stuck extracting the first file. Been about 10 minutes and not going anywhere :-( Anyone else having the same problem?

Superb suggestions and superb presentation. We'll see how much of it is addressed in the final. *cross fingers*

Before I knew it, I had watched the whole video. I'm pathetic.

[quote who="Sushikawa" reply="5" id="2687736"]I've thought about this as well. You wouldn't be reducing the amount of buildings, or the sense of presence on the map that makes them "awesome". You'd just be using the same number of smaller tiles. Even on larger maps it feels like I'm playing on a kind of small island and not a continent. Breaking the city grid up further and adding more space between them would definitely help with that. It would also open room for addons t

[quote who="HuaynaCapac" reply="8" id="2687429"]EUIII has the best example of diplomacy in any game I know of. It's fairly complex but very easy to understand. I'm not sure such a sophisticated system is within the scope of Elemental. The casus belli system is brillaint, but it relies on having factors such as stability, prestige and reputation. [/quote] It doesn't have to be complicated. Just have reputation between two factions take a hit and possibly stir a war when thes

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="1" id="2687428"] So what would be the easy solution to preserve a city's "spatial presence" on the map while remedying the sprawl? Do what I did with my D&D map: scale down the size of a city. Practically, this would involve subdividing a square on which a city is built by either 1/4th's or 1/9th's. I don't agree at all. A level 5 city that only takes up 3-4 tiles doesn't have anywhere near the feel and awesomeness factor of it taking up

I like this idea a lot (most of it.) I don't necessarily see armies clashing out in the wilderness, but I do see parties of your adventurers running into each other and, if you have historical bad blood and a barely binding treating, forgetting quill-and-parchment-treaties back home and having at it. Would definately be interesting as well as make relationships less black and white. It would also make for some interesting Causes Bellum. Rather th

So let me begin this post with a story. When I first started my D&D merchant campaign with my friends 2 years ago I drew up a map for their starting region. It had a great amount of detail. Mountains, meandering rivers, city states, pastures, rolling hills, forests... you get the idea. The map was meant to convey to the players a sense that despite a few bastions of civilization, world was a wild place with scarcely charted wilderness and unknown (

Yeah, I guess the question is whether the mechanics of the game could accomodate a Master of Magic clone. So far, it looks like Elemental mod potential is very versalite, but I'm not entirely sure.

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="11" id="2686503"]One other thing that bothers me is that the higher level quest tiles don't feel/look any more grand than the low level ones. I wished that it would be a bit more exciting and be more exotic to find a witch hut than it does to find an inn. For example, a witch hut should be in a marsh, often surrounded with some monsters. A Wizard tower should be in a hard to reach area, perhaps in the mountains, in the middle of a large for

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="9" id="2686448"]But then again, I get more irritated with monster locations spawning next to my starting location. Both are things I have taken over for the future. [/quote] Very encouraging. So from what I can tell, a lot of people seem to take issue with certain elements of the early "Post Apocalyptic" setting that are specifically cosmetic. It would seem easy enough to modify.

[quote who="GoaGalneGbilski" reply="5" id="2686414"]Look through this if you want to: https://forums.elementalgame.com/384539 Nothing bad about there being survivors, nothing bad about a growing commerce system. Heck, nations appear out of nowhere but still function, merchants work in an instant. Yet inn hints at lengthy travel, something only a few might do before they know of a destination. Not enough to support an inn in every place. My guess is that an inn would appear a few ye

So I'm sure this has been proposed somewhere in the mod thread but is anyone planning to make a Master of Magic mod? You know, like the original but to improve upon with the power of Elemental's engine?

Completely agree that Elemental has fallen into the trap that the original post has mentioned and, yes, it has been mentioned before but it can't hurt to be said once again. At this point, I'm saddened to say that I'm not expecting anything special from Elemental's out-of-box gameplay. However, I do expect that Frogboy's emphasis on player modification will likely yield something revolutionary.

Good suggestions, but I'm sorry, inns being on the map at all at the game's start seems just completely laughable to me. The world is still smoldering after the Apocalypse, there aren't any cities on the map, but there are inns all over the place? Nuke inns on the map all-together. Instead, make emmerging "inn" tiles temporary "water holes" or some other thing that can naturally emmerge that would attract adventurers and such. Second, I would make ques

Is it just me, or is it strange that inns are sitting all over the place post apocalypse? No surviving cities, scattered bands of survivors... but inns? This detail seems to murder the ambiance. Perhaps instead of inns sitting all over the place early games they can be some other feature that serves the same purpose. Perhaps waterholes or small springs where adventurers happen to often gather. Anyone else think the inns are odd?

[quote]So, is monster behavior the only thing world difficulty changes? Doesn't it make monsters stronger/more numerous/anything else to actually make them tougher to kill off? If we were intent on seeking out and killing monsters anyway, it doesn't seem like changing their behavior would make them any more difficult, it only affects you if you were peacefully building and counting on the monsters to leave you alone. Or are we expected to control monster difficulty ourselves, by racing up the

[quote who="psychoravin" reply="86" id="2682634"]As far as tactical battles in multiplayer I'd leave that OUT right now. I know from experience the majority don't like to sit there while two other guys fight out their battles tactically. Multiplayer should be fast and autocalc would be best for it. When you have 14 other players in a 15 player game everybody wants it to stream along. So, /not signed for tactical battles in multiplayer right now. Perhaps an ARENA mode ladder type structure tac

[quote]1) I don't understand the need to totally destroy the city. I would guess it stems from the implementation in Warcraft, but it seemed wrong to me there as well. Once the people are dead the looting begins, then historically often the buildings got fired.[/quote] In movies, historically, the buildings get burned :-) Cities were rarely obliterated and the fields salted. In movies, villains would often dart through city streets lighting up buildings before they even

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="45" id="2682194"] Quoting goodgimp, reply 38 Quoting Frogboy, reply 21Re: Multiplayer - our main focus for release day on multiplayer is to make sure it's FUN to play for the widest number of users and then, from there, create lots and lots of options for custom games. We're still evaluating whether tactical battles will be in MP initially or whether to implement them somewhat differently for MP later on. <br