Tridus

[quote who="Lord_Asmodeous" reply="14" id="2741176"] Yes, absolutely out there doing Quests, marching into Enemy territory? Not often. Kings were not commonly on the front lines, there are a few exceptions to this rule (for instance Richard the Lionhearted), but they were soldiers well before they were Kings, and in virtually all cases they were incredibly poor Kings.[/quote] What does that have to do with anything? We've got wizards and dragons, realism is not on the table. :P<b

My likes: Early game! Making a custom sovereign (even if you do get less points then the prebuilt ones for some silly reason) and founding a kingdom. Then I can run around recruiting and gearing up heroes. I can imbue one to make new casters. Fighting off monsters in the wilds to reclaim the world for my kingdom. Late game is blah due to the balance and mechanics issues and I don't tend to finish games, but the early game is just great.

[quote who="Lord_Asmodeous" reply="10" id="2741091"] I wanted to talk about this. Considering that your sovereign will die in enemy territory and that causes the game to end, your response shouldn't be "Then I need my sovereign to be more powerful". It should be "I need to keep my sovereign out of enemy territory". Better/more powerful champions, a family line with channeler kids, splitting your sov's essence to the champions, these are all viable strategies that are actually

[quote who="phazonfreak" reply="1" id="2741038"]Don't do it or it will make the sovereigns even more overpowered, personally I would even increase the cost for that talent. Thanks to this talent and the bug that you can equip your sovereign with as many rings, kits and items as you desire, sovereigns can easily kill everything on the map without even touching any magic.[/quote] Considering that your sovereign dying in enemy territory causes a game over and that makes actually attackin

here's a link to the RPGwatch review. It's a pretty good one, really. He clearly put some effort into writing that one.

Here's another thread where someone asked the same thing. I think the answers are still pretty relevant. The short answer is that it depends. The game has problems, but it's pretty playable. If you can deal with that while the devs work to fix it, then it's probably worth a buy. If you prefer to wait until it's been polished up, then you should wait. *Eventually* you should buy it though, it's going to be a great game

Poll is here. Here's the forum thread that goes with it.

[quote who="BlackRainZ" reply="43" id="2740922"] I agree but I don't think they could spend any more time on beta. I don't know all the detail and I don't think any of us know all the details. I think that there is too much assumptions and misinterpretations going on. I would say give them the benefit of the doubt, but that's me. I also don't see a big deal about the money I spent, knowing the game will only get better. There are tons of games I have wasted money on in the past, I don't

Set the map bigger, that'll give you more room to work. Also if you find resources hard to find start doing adventure tech research, one of the options makes extra resources appear and it helps a lot. Finally - just to be sure, you are building the farm upgrade on the fertile land tiles (and other upgrades on their tiles) right? You'd be surprised how often people don't realize that you have to do that. (Click the fertile land once it's in your city bouandry and click "build"). <

None of the Walmarts around me are carrying it either, and EB has no idea what it is. Future Shop doesn't have it either (and my Future Shop is th best place in town for PC games, if they don't have it nobody will). Do you have a DVD burner? If so, your best bet is to buy it digitally, without the box. Then you can go to Impulse Anywhere and download an archive version that can be installed offline. Burn that to a DVD, and you're done.<

[quote who="GalahadtheElder" reply="2" id="2740586"]Yeah I have been thinking about reinstalling Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic for weeks now... might just do it today. Only reason not to is it's TOO good, and will take up time, and make me cry and howl in the night for AoW 3... .[/quote] Oh man I wish! Stop making Xbox games Triumph!

[quote who="Mistwraithe" reply="36" id="2740714"] I was astounded at how quickly Stardock wanted to go from making major gameplay changes in the beta to going gold and releasing just a few weeks later. We had conversations about it in the office, all trying to work out how and when they were going to polish it. We just couldn't see how it would work - they were only starting to work seriously on the AI what 6 weeks or so before release? The data files were in huge flux, the engine was st

[quote quoting="post"] Magical Staves. What: I created a set of magical staves that give the equipped unit (the Sovereign or designed units) a ranged magical attack that's not as powerful as a spell, but doesn't cost any mana and is based on Intelligence. This does away with the whole "I'll just give my Sov a bow" thing, making him more effective (and just cool!) in combat right from the start. When you get right down to it, it really is a bow with a spell anim

[quote who="Simsum" reply="38" id="2740683"] It's not just poor balance. The basic system Elemental uses to compute results is simply not right for the game. Balance-wise, the problem is that values have to be too low and too similar to produce a predictable result. Sadly, that problem is made worse by how simple the system is: it simply isn't enough to be interesting/compelling, and it's not just a major departure from the usual "to-hit + to-damage + to-avoid-damage" mechanics similar g

[quote who="charon2112" reply="28" id="2740781"] I've heard this complaint many times on here and I don't get it. How is it worse than Galciv 2's ship design...? It's mostly cosmetic and for fun. Then you put the weapons on. GC2 has three weapon types, Elemental has at least that many. So why is everyone whining about unit design?[/quote] That's not really true. GC2 just gives you space and you can go nuts. You can make planetary defense ships with n

[quote who="Mtn_Man" reply="31" id="2740808"] I mentioned this elsewhere, but I think Stardock's problem at the moment is that they're now a rookie player in the big leagues (thanks to Sins of Solar Empire's widespread popularity) but they're still operating like they're an unknown indie developer with a small but fanatically loyal fan base. They'll need to step up their game (figuratively and literally) if they want to continue competing at this level.[/quote] Yeah, I agre

[quote who="Sylar666" reply="15" id="2740787"]I when starting new game.. and I have only my heroes (Without the city) - can discovery technology trree? .. In another game I only unlock tech tree when I building appropriate building? [/quote] If you get a sovereign or a champion who provides research on their own, you can start getting technology before you found a city. If you hit the "Create Sovereign" button when picking a leader you can make your own and see what abiliti

[quote who="OliverFA" reply="33" id="2740646"]Who reviews the reviewers?[/quote] Batman.

[quote who="Himmelweiss" reply="9" id="2740610"] The AI developer went on vacation, which, I'm sure he needed but the timing is a little odd considering this game needs daily patches and a lot of AI work. Yep, i was thinking exactly the same.[/quote] Speaking as a software developer myself, sometimes this is actually better. You get to a point when you're working crazy hours that your work suffers for it, and you create more bugs and problems then you fix. At that point the

[quote who="penlin" reply="29" id="2740603"]IMHO, the shacknews comments are well thought out. So much of the game feels superfluous when all that matters is building that big military stack. The game (so far) is a simple exercise in building a strong stack of units ... with a whole ton of other bells and whistles (e.g. questing) to tempt/distract you away from this single winning strategy and give you the illusion of choice.[/quote] That's just a balance problem, though. A

We've had a few of these threads, but I think the answer is "it depends". Are you patient? If you want a polished, "hard" game right now, this probably isn't it yet. But you asked will I be playing it after christmas? Absolutely! There's a great game in here struggling to get out, it just needs balancing & polishing. We know from past experience that Stardock will deliver that once the game gets the extra time it needs.

[quote quoting="post"] d) This is the part you might not like. You're going to have to eat short-term profitability on this, in order to help in the long-term. You'll need to be aggressive on discounting once you can. (I understand you can't right now) That said, the expansion. It needs to be a stand-alone game, with a bug-free, very generous demo out a month before release. Maybe even full game esque. The burden of proof is righ

1up Review - C+ - He doesn't much like anything far as I can tell, though he does say multplayer is "robust" (wonder when he got to use it? :P) Also - Tom Chick's review - "But for now, Elemental is not a game I recommend you buy. It's a game I recommend you watch." is his conclusion. The article is more optimistic though

[quote who="AminMaalouf" reply="4" id="2738444"]Stupid noob question: How are the devs supposed to find my debug.err on pastebin?[/quote] Post a link to it here. :)

That was a pretty fair review, really. It's pretty clear after playing for a while that there's a great game locked in here struggling to get out. Given more time, it'll get there.