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Amusingly, I dropped by here after saying half-jokingly to myself, "I know, I'll distract myself from the state of SOTS by checking in on how Elemental is doing. That'll put things in perspective!" Pre-purchased (didn't I learn from Elemental? Well, at least I didn't buy a collectors edition..) and downloaded, even upgraded my system to Win7 just so I could play it. And it was completely broken. I was able to push buttons and make ships and fly around, but anything mea

Check out the most recent posts on the front page (Labor Day Notes). The reason for the AI rushes, and in fact most of the basic AI issues is that it wasn't updated after all the data changes just before release. The AI doesn't weigh equipment and techs properly, and so rushes you because it mistakenly believes that it's sovereign is pretty badass. Once that data is updated for the AI's eyes and it realizes that it's actually running around half naked with a sharp stick, the

I'll toss my hat in the "Because MoM, duh". Which is also part of the vitrol being delivered on the game. There's a lot of us who, as noted, have been waiting since 1994 for another Civ-like fantasy 4x game while all the industry has seemed to be interested in putting out is HOMM-style kingdom builders.. which while close, is not quite what we've been wanting. When word started to get out that StarDock was trying to get the license to produce MoM2, it sent shockwaves through

[quote who="surlybob" reply="5" id="2751603"] Unless you are "ugly", in which case you can have 3 children. No more, no less.[/quote] Either my current game is bugged or that's (surprise!) not working currently. My current game I'm playing as Markinn and I can verify he is both ugly as sin and quite fertile, with 1 daughter in the field and 2 more and a son waiting behind her.

[quote who="Filthgrinder" reply="2" id="2751874"]There is a Guard button. Have you tried using that?[/quote] Guard currently has no reliable effect I've been able to determine. It doesn't take units off of the tab-to-next-unit rotation, nor does it reliably take them off of the auto-next-unit rotation. If it did do something when an enemy unit came within range I don't know that I'd be able to tell that from randomly popping up as active. Now, if it's meant to work

Pretty much all there in the title. I should say that this occurred to me while I was being a cheese-monkey and running circles around a random monster with my newly matured daughter, because I really didn't feel like waiting 15 months (weeks, years? who knows what time scale turns are on) outside of combat before she could summon her second elemental. It seems silly that I've got units who are able to recover from the most terrible wounds in mere minutes as long as they're

Excellent. That fixes a lot of the playability concerns I've had with the game. A couple of questions though: Will this patch include a fix for shards not affecting spell power? Will this patch include updated XML files that match what's in data.zip so that we can fix minor errors and typos that slip past you guys, and recompile data.zip without scrambling the game? Preferably with all the beta stuff stripped out so that we can tell when something was misname

[quote who="MrMT" reply="6" id="2751237"]ah. OK - thanks for the replies. putting them into a nearby town is something, at least! It seems a shame to lose vets, although quite realistic... experts in old tech get shelved all the time in the real world.[/quote] You really think whole companies of mercenaries were put out to pasture because they couldn't figure out how to adapt from a short sword to a longsword effectively? Of course not. You may get put out to pasture becau

I know, it's a tiny little quibble with so much else that needs fixing or rebuilding, but with the prospect of a lot of the fundamental bugs being fixed, this one bothers me: the game needs to either do smart pluralizing or let me specify the plural form of my unit names. Just a simple check for names ending in -man would do to start, so that I can create a unit called a bowman or an armsman and not look like an idiot once I get squads going with a bunch of -mans running about. Id

Dammit.. the more I play the game and learn about it, the more ways it finds to disappoint me.

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="5" id="2748681"]ObjC: Are you playing in windowed mode, but at your desktop's resolution? A big one to add that I didn't see: (1.06) After saving and re-loading a game where any of your squads have lost members, those lost members are never replaced, i.e. the maximum hitponts of that unit is permanently reduced. Already fixed Will be in the next update.[/quote] ZOMG give this to me now

Fortunately or unfortunately for me, depending on how you look at it, I purchased the LE months ago to get in on the beta (and then wasn't able to participate much at all past a few crash reports in 1Z.. I know, it's my fault the game shipped like it did), so I'll just comment on your complaints: [quote]1) Combat system (Stardock: learn what a bell curve is.)[/quote] Sad but true, this is completely right. It's not quite the Civ1 spearmen vs. battleship issue, but it's

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6056455/SaveCrash/Dark%20Empire.EleSav http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6056455/SaveCrash/debug.err The area around the city of Bleachwood in the linked save game appears to be crashing the game repeatedly and at random, usually when a unit attempts to move through the area, moves in or out of the city, or activates nearby. Happened originally when attempting to found a city there, the game

[quote who="Istari" reply="4" id="2748993"]http://www.gamersbillofrights.org/ #1 Gamers have the right to return a game that does not function or is incompatible with their machine or does not perform at a reasonable level of performance within a reasonable time. "I didn't like it" would not fall into that. We still offer partial refunds. You not liking the game does not make the game a "beta". In the future, I would recommend waiting for a demo.<

First off, kudos to you sir, and a damn fine writeup. I've tried something like this a few times myself (and have taken to keeping a notepad window open beside EWOM just for noting all the bugs, glitches and major/minor annoyances that crop up during play) but always get frustrated writing it up and close the tab. On a related note, am I the only person boggled by the number of issues the UI has, considering that Stardock's primary business is actually.. custom Windows UI design

[quote who="surlybob" reply="1" id="2747257"]Just edit the XML to mod it to your heart's desire! So easy that a caveman can do it!![/quote] You know, it's kind of sad that I'm so much of a 4x fanboy that I've actually been looking at doing bugfixes like that myself. Have you looked at those XML files, though? The maze of InternalNames and DisplayNames spanning across a dozen files just to do one thing.. It's no wonder things are so broken. The sad thing is that since

[quote who="AlixeniusTheGreat" reply="3" id="2746605"]It's the fact that half the features are broken/disfunctional/useless that the game seems like a shell. When the update in September is released, I'm pretty sure you'll find the game is much more a full game and not what it is now.[/quote] I'd argue that the features themselves are actually fairly complete, if buggy. It's things to do with those features we're lacking. I can build cities, design and recruit armies, rese

Does not answer any of those questions in the least, actually. To sum up: big patch in September making big vague changes with just "character creation" and "shared mana pools" specified, grudgingly making a tutorial (I'd settle for a real manual and help system, honest!), expansion pack will be a freebie update instead, new gold master of the updated code, taking a break to work hard on AI and asking reviewers to review the release patch rather than the current one for fairness.

[quote][quote]Fame affected how frequently some random events took place - merchants, mercenaries, heroes.[/quote] yeah, like how charisma effects this in Elemental? [/quote] Affects what? AFAIK charisma only has a small effect on the hiring price of wandering heroes. What else would it affect? I've never seen a random event in EWOM, just stuff that was triggered by accessing a quest hut or goodie hut. Am I missing something? The manual litera

[quote who="JesperEB" reply="9" id="2741225"] So, basically what youre saying is that if one woman takes 9 months to produce a baby, you cant just get 9 women and get a baby in one month?[/quote] Dammit.. I misread that the first time and thought we were going to have to have 'the talk'. But yes, to but it another way: piling more men on a woman doesn't get you babies faster, it just gets you brought up on obscenity charges.

This. Just.. this. Huge variations in 'sovereigns' with the most fundamental choice being which spellbooks you took. That affected the entire way you played the game: which nodes you went after most, which summoned creatures you had supporting your armies, how you affected the world as you grew more powerful. Elemental currently has some minor production bonuses or penalties for sovereigns, with the most extreme I think being Master Archers, which gives you early acc

I'm starting to get a bit worried. I've been flipping back through the old beta board, looking at the various timelines and feature lists, and what I'm seeing is that there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between the game that was announced to the press and advertised on the front page and what the developers were actually shooting for. Part of my disappointment with the game (and I suspect others as well) is that the feature set is technically complete but not nearly as robu

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="129" id="2744556"] -spells being able to affect the map so much (raise/lower land/mountains/etc.). Again this could be expanded upon but still it's a nice addition. That's off the top of my head.[/quote] Master of Magic, Civilization in just about every iteration, and Alpha Centauri all had terraforming spells/techs. I'm not sure if the newer Civs allowed it, but I know SMAC let you raise land from below sea level to hi

1. Fix shard & shrinking unit bug 2. Finish the documentation 3. Learn from MOM magic & unit designs (4. Fix all the typos in the XML files so I don't have to do it for you) Srsly, for a game that's the spiritual successor to MOM, the only things EWOM cribs properly are the ones common to every 4x game. Give me a decent variety of properly balanced spells across all spell books, with a magical research tree that's interesting and meaningful to exp

Getting a similar error here, though the end turn button doesn't grey out, it just goes unresponsive. Happened when giving a unit with 2 movement a 3-tile movement order, though it's worked fine in the past. I could select other units via the left hand list, but not by clicking on their models. Neither the end of turn or pass turn for the individual unit worked. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6056455/EndTurnGreyed/combat%20greyed%20out%20debug.err