I do wish that labor was more than a glorified name for build time. It feels like larger cities should be able to build small improvements more quickly. Heck, you could even get rid of city level restrictions and just make bigger buildings take exponentially longer with small populations! It'd be a much more elegant system, even if it was more complex to predict as a player.
http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_the_review.php I rather like what he had to say.
I had exactly the same pattern happen to me, actually:
That would be a more plausible argument if playing magic-heavy characters wasn't one of the game's core selling points!
[quote who="Dethedrus" reply="18" id="2740200"] Quoting charon2112, reply 16I've had several 400+ turn games with no problems or slowdown... and what game mechanic specifically does not work? Hmm, let's see... Diplomacy is one dimensional Shards don't work outside of auto resolve combat Defense is way too hit or miss (how does a level 4 creature easily one shot my level 9 sovereign with an 800+ CR?)<br /
In the options menu there's a slider that sets at what threshold of enemy units the game will ask you whether or not you want tactical combat. Turn it to zero, and you'll never be forced into auto-resolve.
[quote who="charon2112" reply="11" id="2740156"] Quoting Corbeaubm, reply 10 Quoting Bashemgud, reply 8 This game is easily a b+ atm, and heading for a nice A ^^ Then you haven't noticed the plethora of game mechanics that are flat out broken. I don't even mean "imbalanced", I mean "they don't work." And I'm not talking about crashes or frames per second - I mean game rules mis-programmed so that they don't function. While I believ
[quote who="woca" reply="7" id="2740149"] Quoting charon2112, reply 1 quoting post Right now: the perception of this game is that it's unplayable I can't begin to tell you how wrong that is. There are many haters that will whine no matter what updates Stardock makes. But most on here are having a blast with Elemental. the game is unplayable past 150 turns. it's bug ridden. Game mechanics don't work. i'm glad you ca
[quote who="Bashemgud" reply="8" id="2740123"] This game is easily a b+ atm, and heading for a nice A ^^[/quote] Then you haven't noticed the plethora of game mechanics that are flat out broken. I don't even mean "imbalanced", I mean "they don't work." And I'm not talking about crashes or frames per second - I mean game rules mis-programmed so that they don't function. While I believe Elemental has staggering potential, to call the current build a
Oh, it's a bug. You can have your squad of 8 take a few hp damage, save the game, reload, and have 1 soldier in the unit. If that's not a bug, I don't know what is.
The Assassin Sovereign background doesn't apply in tactical combat, but does in quick resolve combat.
Pleasworkpleaseworkpleasework....
Just remember this: no one would care enough to rant about the technical issues if the core game was crap.
Another reason magic is so weak, brought up in the chat: the best combat spell is the equivalent of a single 20 atk weapon that scales with Int rather than Str. Yeah, there are shards (when not bugged), but there are also squads... and weapons go far beyond 20 atk.
This bug has been mentioned before in the context of city healing messing up group units. However, I had the same issue (a group being reset to singletons) happen to a damaged army in the field when I saved and reloaded the game. I'm beginning to strongly suspect it's something is the save and/or load process that does this to any group unit with an abnormal amount of hp, not city garrisoning itself.
While a lot of mechanical rules tweaking would help, what they really need is a combat AI that actually understands the mechanical dynamics outlined by the OP. If a defending AI army would maneuver to force you into absorbing the first strike, for example, the game would get much more interesting.
What might make my perspective useful/interesting is that I knew going into my purchase that Elemental was technically problematic. I bought it because I wanted to be able to verify for myself whether all the bashing was valid or just sensationalist hype. So I bought the game and have been playing for several days now. The review is now up on my blog: "Word on the street has been that Elemental: War of Magic, a highly-anticipated continuation of the once-glorious
An update, just discovered straight from 1.06 testing: I had this happen to a bunch of units outside a town, because I loaded the game from a save at that point . If you have damaged groups of units, save the game, and the reload, problems are extremely likely.
I got a glitch where my mana fully refilled every turn instead of 1/turn. That game, magic was far from powerless. In fact, it was a lot more like I'd expected the game to be. Teleporting every turn, casting several AoE spells per combat turn, battle after battle... good times. :D The mana regeneration system serious needs re-work. 1/turn is flat out too restrictive for one of the most potentially fun and exciting mechanics in the game.
I've been playing a game after patching to 1.06, and discovered that my Sovereign's mana was recharging to full every single turn regardless of how much I spent. I'm pretty sure this isn't intended, even if the standard 1/turn is/was exceptionally low. Sadly, I have no idea precisely when this started in the game or what might have triggered it - or even if a particular event triggered it rather than it being that way for the whole game! :(
All this is why mods for this game are going to rock (if/when the technical problems with the engine get sorted out).
Yep, confirming that 1.06 does not fix the GPU issue here.
Resourceful definitely works, as does egalitarian (though why is the latter worth points when it's only effect is graphical?). Those are the only ones I've tested successfully though.
Yeah, I've had this happen too. Frequently enough that I can't recall all the circumstances, but usually after a long stretch of play culminating in a tactical combat.
Yup - for some reason Elemental doesn't want to utilize some people's GPUs. No clue why - it happens to both Nvidia and ATI users, on multiple operating systems, according to this thread.