Nenjin

I didn't read your whole post; I didn't have to. I've agreed with everything I did read, and am sure you've missed very little. In total agreement about the Spellbook. Bland, flavorless and unattractive. Thanks for taking the time to do it (and include pictures.) +Karma.

Point in fact though, the game had a second release date already allotted for it. Waiting until 2011 was not only doable, it was budgeted for. They could have waited at least that long.

If you're looking for a really deep magic system, or one dialed up to the 9's, you should probably wait. That said, the game gives you plenty of ability to play a caster. You can specialize your stats for it, and there's probably 50 or more spells in the game. Using magic lacks some pizazz and cool factor, but it's effective in game. Actually, way way too effective. So there's plenty to do and be as a caster. But it's not perfect, or finished, so YMMV.

It's worth mentioning, this is the biggest thing Stardock has ever tried to do at release. What they'd done in the past has worked for them as one of the bigger indie houses, but back then they'd never had to defend themselves against comparisons to Blizzard. That would be like comparing the Jamaican military to the Chinese. But now they've waded into the AAA market, with AAA prices and AAA expectations. Average joe gamer doesn't know or ultimately care who Stardock is or what they in

He's right, that's not a review you'll get from random game journalist. I think the game is somewhat more focused in it's current state than he gives it credit for; and I disagree that it's necessarily just a game you should watch for now. It's quickly growing on me, as games are meaty and I get the same almost dizzying sense of tunnel vision playing Elemental that I did with the "finished" builds of Gal Civ2. 5 hours of Elemental and my brain is on fire. So he had to go with

After an epic 6 hour session with the sandbox last night, I came up with a few minor but important areas that could use some simple improvements. Some of these may be repeats that are seen around the forum, but they probably bear mentioning a lot. All from Normal, large world size games... Order of Operations This really needs to get sorted out. Maybe this should be a in bug post, bu

I too chalk this up to yet another oversight. Just one of those flags from beta that wasn't changed, or even written, for the release.

I find the pacing to be just about right at normal...but the distribution of resources has a lot to do with it. A ton of research resource and it feels like there's not enough research-able tech. Too little and you are leagues behind the AI. By the same token, AI placement and their resource availability determines how quickly the game heats up. If Kraxis gets lucky on their placement, they just start rampaging around. If they also happen to start right next to you, it totally changes

I'm a big fan of dictatorial moderation. I know it sounds evil, but everyone has their house, their rules and the way they like to keep order. While that contributes to places on the Internet becoming bastions of agreement and closed-thinking, on the other hand....an unmoderated website is a cesspit, and can actually become a liability for people that visit it or operate it. And as far as America is concerned, you don't get to walk into someone's house or place of business and behave as you p

The biggest reason I'd suggest waiting on Elemental is, if you want to stay current, every daily new patch breaks your save game.

[quote]I would also say that some champions should have zero magical ability and be unable to use the essence of their lord. This would really differentiate the different heros that you could encounter - warriors (no magical ability), mages (minimal martial combat ability) and those that can do both.[/quote] I agree. I don't necessarily like the lore that says 'oh anyone can be magical if the sovereign wants them to be.' Some people should just not be be spellcaster

It's just not that interesting though. It makes you almost totally dependent on shards for real power, which I guess fits the lore, and all spells end up being the same, or lack any characteristics, because they're all coming from the same damage range, and end up in the same damage range, which is everything. That's addressable by making spells more interesting, but I just don't get the sense of getting stronger in Elemental. I just get access to more skills, and then with one or two

I could have sworn I did that, I always do as with Steam and whatever. When I went to the options, it was already disabled. It hasn't been re-enabled in msconfig since, so my bad. I'll cop to the attitude.

I think what Stardock was going for is that they didn't want to have spells have independent damage values, modified by intelligence, because then they'd have to write a battery of spells to scale up and that was boring, considering they have, what, 6 varieties of damage sources to address? So instead they hinged damage on intelligence, and made spells modify your intelligence damage. So there are "up to half your intelligence" "double your intelligence" "equal to your intelligence."

As it stands now, heroes have some serious issues. What Stardock plans for them, I don't know, so I'm making these suggestions assuming Stardock thinks they're fine. Which I doubt, but still...they need some work. There are three fundamental problems with heroes that make them unfun and/or not useful to the player. I'll talk about what I think the problems are first then move on to suggestions. 1. Heroes, at the core, are not different from each other at all. 2.

Just like the title says. I've disallowed Impulse to start up when I boot my PC through msconfig, and yet every time I launch Impulse it re-enables itself to launch at start up. It's really pissing me off. That puts it in the same bracket as Quick time, Adobe, and the most obnoxious anti-viral programs, which seem to like ignoring what the user tells them to do because the company wants them "visible." I don't need Impulse running at start up, nor would I ever. Is there a way to disab

[quote]Some of the adventurer champions are quite strong with stats in the 15-19ies at level 1 and fair gear like leather armor and same-tier weapons. If you can recruit one of these champions in the first 40 turns you can easily take out most other sovereigns. Even if you don't go on a conquering spree the champion should pay itself by killing monsters and in the long-term it should be your largest income source.[/quote] Except in combat, strength modifies weapon damage to

IMO, hero professions needs to describe a larger range of skills than just the one or two they get. The game doesn't even need to tell us what they're profession is, so long as it's internally organizing them and giving them new abilities. I think every champion should have at least two versions of their skill. One for when you hire them, and one they attain at higher level so they stay competitive later on. They also need to get combat stats as part of their level raises. Tha

If you make contact with an adventurer along a diagonal instead of one of the 4 cardinal directions, the game reads it as you trying to attack them, auto battles, and you get called a terrible Sovereign for killing an adventurer.

The downside to tying everything to shards is that, because maps are so random, there's no guarantee they will be anywhere near you, and all the best spells could end up in the hands of the AI, and the player may go a whole game without the best gooey gooey.You can argue the law of averages applies and you'll get at least 1...but in games where that doesn't happen, someone is going to feel they've wasted a lot of time on a map that put that a (100% 400%?) disadvantage. It's a tricky b

[quote]Hmm that is interesting maybe the map and environment is keyed to what you the player is doing mostly.[/quote] I've watched the strongest AI in one game march circles around monster packs that could have flattened my army and their's. I don't know if monsters fight the other players. I don't know who they're fighting, for that matter, to lose any of that HP. But at Level 3 Adventuring, the Kraxis player had probably 6 units out with a bunch of randomly equipped soldiers, and th

And I think that's what they don't want; the land to get cleared. I think they sort of want the wilds to be an xp farm...but probably not to this degree.

So far this is why I research adventure slowly, when I'm ready. It's the only counter, and you'll still get hit with a lot of monsters, but they'll be low level, and you can fortify some guys if they're near your borders and the monsters will just throw themselves at them. I really LIKE the mechanic they've set up, it just needs some tweaking and some more variables added into it. Like, it needs to consider population density vs. space. One monster stack should need x tiles to spawn,

Under Train Soldiers, you should have an entry for spiders now, and can set how big a squad you make and their experience level and all of that. If you don't see them, it's a bug. (A pun, har har)

Er, wow. I felt monster spawning was out of whack. But that's insane. Late game I went north where I had maybe 7+ units hanging out. And it's been said by Brad that monsters will start to congregate in unclaimed territory as the game goes on. But monsters spawning back to back doesn't sound right. They also seem to pick a favorite area to spawn and just breed like crazy.