AIAndy

Personally I would have loved multiplayer but I can understand the decision that with limited resources the SP game has to be optimized first. This kind of game is still rarely played in multiplayer due to the large amount of time that has to be invested which means that usually only prearranged matches between friends happen (I have played Civ4 quite often in MP in the last year but every single game took multiple evenings). Nonetheless the explanation is odd. Tactical battle

The beta started to get rushed about half a year ago when whole parts where suddenly skipped or done in a feature reduced way (like testing the MP code with a 1vs1 against the AI ...). All that "We are far further internally" does not really make sense with a beta which mainly consisted of people who already paid for the game. The result now is that we have a semi polished part that was tested for a long time, mainly city building (which in part was there since the beginning) and a part which

More funny anti-twilight stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glNuQiE77E

I think you also need more ways to balance the reusage of powerful spells (which there do not seem to be a lot of really world changing ones anyway). Consider making the mana regen of the sovereign an important stat and make some spells take multiple rounds to cast until you have poured all the mana needed into them. Because, as another person already pointed out, the Spell of Making taking 20 mana and instantly cast is quite anti climatic. So that powerful spell took only the same am

My vote goes to a sliding bar that allows you to set the amount of scaling to how much you like it (so not simple scaling/no scaling but a percent). That would then range from no scaling at all over scaling a bit to full scaling.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="19" id="2668066"]I'm sure in some future expansion pack we can dive deeply into "subtle" spells. It would be great if you could provide some concrete examples of spells you would like. We're all ears.[/quote] There are many different spell type kinds still missing. Spells that effect the position of units like knockbacks (e.g. an PBAoE knockback to give your hero some breathing space) or combat teleports. Spells that effect the entire

Is it possible to derive one unit from another in the XML (like inheritance in OOP)? Like if you want to have a certain part of the settings the same for a group of units with the possibility to change a part of it without having to copy paste it to all the units affected. Is it possible for two mods to change the same units but different parts of them? Like if you have one mod changing the visuals and one mod rebalancing the stats?

The first research complete screen of the game was displayed. I clicked on some of the buildings that are unlocked to see what they do in the Hiergamenon. After clicking (or maybe double clicking) on something in the Hiergamenon the game crashed to desktop without an error message. Dump: http://mattes-schorndorf.de/andreas/Elemental0_804-2010-06-26T13-19-39-839.zip

The mods on that site look interesting. I guess it must be quite an effort to hack the assembler code of the game to fix bugs and change things.

[quote]2. Related to the first part, cities look too... dense, inorganic. There are no roads or spaces between buildings, so cities (especially early on) tend to end up as clumps of the same buildings everywhere.[/quote] I am not sure if that is still doable in a manageable amount of time but it would be great if you would split up functional fields into a center visual part and a transition part to each side. That way according to a priority that part could have a separate visual loo

A stack containing any unit with an attack of 0 does not attack. It just does nothing if you try to command it to attack an enemy unit even if you have multiple units with a valid attack. In the next turn the enemy unit even moved on the same field without triggering a fight.

On one of the first rounds. After just moving a champion recruited last turn to the new town I clicked on the realm button (I mean the one which allows you to research, dynasty stuff and the like). The game crashed to desktop without any error message. There does not seem to be any debug.err in the place mentioned in the Beta Reporting Guide.

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="48" id="2641897"] Quoting Denryu, reply 43 Of course, having an AI that can win without cheating is going to be a nice change too. Hopefully the AI will be decent enough...however I don't think that it's possible to create an AI, which is able to beat a good player. We shall see.[/quote] Depends on the amount of work you invest. I'd say it is possible although not likely within the constraints of the Elemental project. Maybe some community wor

What do you use for the AI to have a grasp on the interconnection of different islands and closed mountain valleys? A high level pathing that only considers zones and how you get from one to the other? Btw, are there units that can get over mountains or is the only way to get to someone who cut himself off by high mountains to lower those mountains by magic?

@Tridus: Conflict resolving is quite possible with a bit of AI and initiative. Like a unit moving to defend a city and arriving late would only appear after a certain amount of time in combat has passed (That would also give some interesting strategic options to keep it from reaching the town gate or other things). Most conflicts are easily resolved by considering the units moving linearly over a certain amount of time (so after half the time they have moved for half their movement po

My favorite would be a simultaneous system with 3-4 phases: You can manage your cities, research and the like during any phase. 1. Order phase: You can give orders to units and you also flag them for different AI behaviour in carrying out those orders (from exactly like I commanded to different reactions to the behaviour of other people). Once you think you are finished you set the end turn flag but you can still continue. When all have set that flag there is a 5s countdown an

So does the game itself only run on the server then and the clients only display graphics and provide the interface? If that is the case then what I would consider great is if you could connect to a running game and not only to a newly started game. In so many games it happens that people lose connection or leave and the game gets bad from then on. With the possibility for people to rejoin a running game even if their client crashes or whatever that problem would be reduced. T

Fate is a concept that is quite often used in fantasy novels in one way or another. Since divination is considered kind of passive, lets split the concept into fate and divination. Fate can have a large number of different effects on people. With fate altering spells you can alter or generate those and with divination you can find out about fate which is already in place. And of course there are already quite some fates from random chance alone. Try to fulfill the fates that a

It sounds quite interesting. Divination as a kind of spell that is uncertain and draws powers to change future fate. But it should not be too easy or cheap to use. So what about this: You cast a power spell or complete a quest and the tarot minigame screen is shown. Depending on how you got there you have a certain amount of points that you can use to change the outcome. Like you could replace a card right after it has been played or swap it with another one already played. Or

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="3" id="2449378"]an empire-wide buff/debuff which lasts for say ... 10 turns or so, is certainly not a "simple" spell[/quote] I think we talk about "simple" in a different way. Certainly that spell is interesting but its mechanics are still pretty simple as you just cast the spell and then get an effect for a time. What I would like are interesting mechanics that require preparation. Take the Spell of Mastery from MoM. That is what I would ca

If it is just a simple spell you cast and then it works in your territory then that is not the kind of ritual spells I was thinking about. But if you would have to perform a ritual spell at each corner of the area you want that effect on then that is more the kind I am thinking about. So lets assume the enemy knows that you have placed such a spell in a major part of your territory. He can just accept the spell and go for the target city he wants or he has the strategic option

To make magic more interesting, I would like to see its mechanics go beyond simple cast and target. What about a kind of ritual magic, that requires more than one spell before it reaches its primary effect (though it might have secondary effects before that). Lets assume an army approaches one of the cities of a powerful channeler. He has a spell that can flood land to turn it into a deadly swamp for some time but that spell requires a nearby big water source. Since the approa

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="125" id="2417370"] Quoting Mandelik, reply 124 Of course, if we're talking multiplayer with a system requiring pause everytime someone wants to give orders or choose between the 15 spells his sovereign can cast, it could end either a click-fest without pauses or a nightmare of stop-go-stop-go-stop-go... Yeah, it won't work in MP games. [Well it works, but it will be extremely annoying...][/quote] Maybe pressing the pause button would onl

The game crashed to desktop after selecting to swap in the research of Enchantment. debug.err: http://pastebin.com/m634603ad

Placing a lumber mill as first building allowed me three positions to build on (instead of the two I expected), but building it prevented me from building any further buildings. It seemed to use up two tiles.