jpmcconnell

Agree wholeheartedly. Good job guys. I'm also one of those guys that loves the art style, very art deco.

Idea for a very basic fix to what seems like a major problem: imbue champion spam. Right now there is no real downside to imbuing all champions prior to battles, removing afterwards. It creates all kinds of weird balance issues with the spell system (from spamming arcane arrows and heal, to allowing essentially all your armies to fly around the map like drunken hummingbirds). It's just too easy to immediately get an entire army of spell casters. Basic fix: just up the initial

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="14" id="2840841"]We talked about it, and cooldowns don't really change the fact that a player with Arcane Arrow, Spell Blast, and Touch of Entropy could still fire off those three spells in one round. We're trying a code fix where casting a spell uses up all remaining spell points (still open to micromanagement cheese...using up most of your pts before casting a spell) but it's a step in the right direction.[/quote] I agree. This sounds like a good step a

Hmmmm... I never seem to have a lack of mana, if anything I almost think there is an overabundance. I general grab attunement for my SOV, Doubles mana production initially. Get shard harvesting early in order to start building a base of production. I almost never have any persistent enchantments running including imbue champion. I ALWAYS cast before battle and then dispel afterwards. Also I generally only use spells on big battles, e.g. when I'm about to capture an enemy capit

Turn 138, hard difficulty. 4/4/3/4/1 Seems balanced right now, but after this I will go almost entirely into civ and war (unless I really want dragons, or have a hankering after a quest win). Civ- concentrate mainly on gildar, economic, and housing boosts. In most of my games my primary constraint seems to be gildar so I try to boost this as fast as possible. Warfare- currently by far the most useful, but I actually never usually get beyond light plate and firs

@ DSraider Sov with attunement = 4 mana per turn, plus had two shards under my control= 8 mana per turn. got two more shard when I conquered the first enemy capital = 12 mana per turn. I'm currently sitting on 738 mana on turn 138 in that game. Mana is almost never an issue for me. Key is never keep any ongoing enchantment running. See a battle coming, imbue all champions arcane weapon everyone, battle over, remove all enchantments. For a stack of 8 this costs

I've seen something similar in all the games I've played as well. Good thing I still have arcane arrow, spell blast and fire dart and can instantly imbue all my champions prior to battle. Cheese vs. cheese, my cheese wins.

@Winnihyn Agree with you that tactical combat probably will not be balanced until some sort of more realistic initiative system comes into play. If the initiative systems really is implemented in the way that you lay out then this may become less of a problem. The problem currently, and something none of our suggestions really deal with is the fact that combat is still, one side moves, other side moves, etc. So long as this is the case there will be a huge incentive to 'game'

@Rossanderson48, Used hard difficulty for this game. Just tried another with extreme was able to do something similar. Granted this is early after the patch. The problem here is that even this early you can pretty easily discern that the something is out of wack. Elemental is in many senses a steam rolll game. I.e. the person with the largest production/resource base will almost always win the game; currently there is no real meachanism to penalize large empires or slow down the

I actually agree with you on my first two solutions. I think they cripple things to an unnecessary extent. I actually prefer solution number three of making local city population important in some other way, e.g. speed up production on high level units/buildings.

Overall, 1.09r is looking much better. Have had a couple crashes but just finished up a couple hours of playing with no issues. Resources, especially Gildar is starting to constrain production. I like the nerfs to gildar bonuses, they're working nicely and really making me think where I want to spend. Materials and pop are still not constraining production in any significant way except very early in the game. However, a couple of spells, namely arcane arrow and spell blast are still o

Which weapons are armor piercing?

Found it http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10701954/Elemental1_09q-2010-12-08T19-27-31-692.zip http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10701954/Elemental1_09q-2010-12-08T15-44-01-65.zip 

Hits on a basic problem throughout the game. Bottom line, its almost always the best idea to just shove the best armor and weapons on someone and shove them out the door. There's no penalty to loading up your archers with plate armor other than some extra resource costs, which given the fact that I'm almost never constrained by resources is not much of a penalty. There's no real trade off in weapons, there almost always a 'right' choice at any tech level. Who's using axes when you can equip s

@Archonsod I realize its also used for military units, problem is even when you factor in military units you still never get anywhere near population growth < amount you can consume in production. So far in ever game I've played I end up with 100s of excess population simply by growing my cities to level 3-5 in order to get at the good buildings. I'm not neglecting my army either, in general I could easily steamroll the AI factions, I've been letting them live just so I could test

I'm unable to find the ProgramData directory in my C drive, could it be under a different name?

This post also got me thinking about how few interesting strategic choices there really are in the beginning of the game. As I outlined above there were approximately 2, maybe 3 choices that I really had to make during the first 20-30 turns turns. I hate to compare with civilization, but I'll compare it to Civilization. What choices do you have to make in the first 20-30 turns of Civ 4: Do I build a worker immediately? Do I build a settler immediately? Or do I bui

Bottom line, I have yet to play a game in which i was limited by population in any way past the first 10 turns. Given the current mechanics of the game its pretty easy to reason out why this occurs. Beginning game. Current base hub production for population is 1. First structure you build is beacon of hope which takes 3 turns. Turn Population Growth Rate Event 1 0 &nb

I don't think I have ever run into a time, baring extremely early game where I have found any resource to be a limiting factor. I don't think I trying to overly game the system, just building what makes sense at the time, going for resources, etc. I end up with 1000s of each resource, massive incomes, and little real concern about where I should deploy any resource. This is the worst for population, I don't think I have ever EVER EVER concerned myself with the population number after the firs

Can't figure out any pattern. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10701954/debug.err

Agree with arcane arrow being even more overpowered. Spell blast is similarly overpowered. I was able to defeat the entire army guarding the last piece of the forge of the overlord in one turn with just spell blast and arcane arrow from 2 casters plus one dragon. However, at least arcane arrow and spell blast are a couple rungs up the spell tree and not level one spells. Which leads to a second point that I may write a full post on. Moving up to the next level of spell s

Just started up a new game in 1.09q. This problem is not specific to 1.09q but its been bothering me for quite awhile. Basically, heal is overpowered. In my new game I wasn't even trying to go for a steamroll strategy early, but I ended up being able to wipe out the two nearest rivals within the first 100 turns. Basic strategy, beeline to heal and arcane weaponry grab some spears for you 3-4 champions and your sov. If you have these combos and your rivals don't

In addition this would need to be balanced with something that made going into enemy territory and holding a protracted siege costly/dangerous. In Civ IV this was done with supply costs for units outside of your national borders, moving a unit into enemy territory, or uncontrolled territory dramatically increased the amount of upkeep required. This is an excellent mechanic that could be easily copied for Elemental, however, there are even more interesting things that could be implemen

Pop Up Windows - I like the pop-ups. I kinda wish that there was some slightly more overt indications along the side bar when one of a city's queues becomes stagnant. Now, despite liking the mechanic, the pop ups don't wait for one another. You find out a city needs attention, then immediately get whisked away to select your next spell. I'm sure you guys know about this and are planning to fix it, but it's worthy of mention because it makes me want to pu

Let us besiege cities. Not just attack cities, besiege them. Currently, city defenders get defensive bonuses for occupying a city, thus with two relatively balanced armies the city the attacker will always be at an disadvantage. This is a relatively straight forward and also very good concept. It SHOULD be hard to attack cities, attacking should require more/better forces than defending. In many respects I think the defensive bonus of cities needs to be increased, especially in the early game