Nenjin

I'd advise you to read very carefully, and start very slowly. There is a lot going on in Elemental. Your workshop just produces 1 of a resource every season. It says that on the building card. And your sovereign isn't a god at the start of the game, so don't try to use them like one. I too was instantly sucked into Gal Civ 2, so I know where you're coming from. Elemental is not at Gal Civ 2's level of stable yet. And Elemental isn't as easy to get into.

I will say that magic is in a better state than it was at 1.0. Both mechanically and in terms of content. Magic still has A WAYS to go though, to really meet expectations. They've broken up the process of researching spells so you don't get access quite as easily to all of them. The balance on spells is better, and some are more thoughtfully designed. But the spellbooks themselves feel fairly limited. Content takes time to do right and to produce enough of. It's on the right track. Expect bet

[quote]When are we going to get a fix to the towns names changing during gameplay on the overhead display. This has been an issue since release and even though it was minor one compared to many other bugs at release it would be good to know that it might be looked at soon. It becomes very hard to find certain towns when playing on a large map[/quote] I can honestly say I've not had this issue in many builds of Elemental. Towns stay what I name or ar

Oh you've got me all wrong. My goal isn't to "beat" the AI. My goal is to lock it down and see how it behaves. I never kill AIs, that would ruin the point of what I'm doing. (Plus I like to play Diplomatic empires that just negotiates wars between other nations, backed by a superior military that could crush anything. [insert country here] basically :P) So I like to try and find out how the AI behaves when it's only really got proactive options left. It seems now it understands the di

They may have been destroyed by wandering monsters. It's not out of the realm of possibility. They're supposed to start with at least one super strong guardian unit though.... Your game sounds full of all sorts of weirdness, so I'd go attach a save game to a thread in the support forum. Janusk showing up as an army on Turn 1 is a major problem.

Yeah it's funny how people can report wildly different behaviors between games, and assume their's is the one that holds true across all games. Like, I haven't personally seen a faction wiped out, much less attacked by a monster, since like 1.03 or something. I see the AI attacking monsters to get experience....but I don't see the 80+ monster armies chasing the AI around like they do me. A lot of it comes down to how players play too. I aggressively scout for all the available food re

I wasn't aware minor factions could just up and quit the game. You're talking like, Ilyana and those factions right?

YMMV. The game has improved dramatically since 1.0. But it has issues still. It'd say at least half of people experience little to no crashes, and half experience them pretty regularly. Right up to 1.1, I was getting a crash every few hours. And the support forum can show you people crashing at other various places. I think it's worth a look if you've already bought the game though.

Well, part of the problem is the quasi-random nature of the game's design. Factions can't depend on resources being there in every game, so the AI has to focus on things it knows it can do: build research. Factions are supposed to have some differences, so not every faction mazimizes in each area, where the player does. So every AI has a major weak point that is sort of by design. Add in continuing rebalancing over units, weapons, spell, cities, resources....and any on

And I could have sworn that at one point, there were goodie huts in the water. There aren't anymore. But using Elementerra, you can build island maps where boats are a necessity.

That's why I say fundamentals are important. Army sizes are a fundamental because the vast power ranges they confer. Every AI should get that. But should Pariden prioritize military tech the same as Umber? They should both know that you need big armies to not get crushed. That doesn't mean they should both have decided to research full plate and 2-handed weapons. Elemental already has the problem of factions feeling homogeneous. I hope in the push for better AI, they don't become more

Glancing around it seems like people have caught most of the glaring issues, but I'll chip in: 1. AI players don't build anything beefier than single units for the most part. Only the very top performers on the map seem to get that far. 2. The AI barely understands armor. It knows what atk value is good for and how to get it. But it can't think any higher than basic tier armor. 3. The AI doesn't understand it's under threat once war is declared. It reacts to players ju

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="6" id="2848345"]The only word for it is expected.[/quote] Not to downplay many of Elemental's problems, but I'm sure many users get problems for doing this exact thing. People have reported that custom factions and sovereigns from even recent beta versions retain problems when used with the newest versions. It sucks for those of us that enjoy long games, but it's best to scrap everything: game, custom factions and sovereigns, with every update.

A tile of the city literally has to be touching the water. If you have a city near the beach, and you can't build any farther toward the shore, you should be able to build a harbor.

This is not a bug requiring support. You're requesting a feature.

There's this thing called the Holidays. It's a time when everyone eats a lot of food, drinks too much booze, gets gifts, and all the juice that makes for good game development gets poured back into the staff. These guys have been working at breakneck speeds to get Elemental 1.1 ready for the holidays. They need a break so they can come back fresh.

You could also add faction traits that speed up research of a given type, addressing some of the pacing issues, instead of just putting the design through the compactor.

I guess I'm alone in liking the current tech system. I like being able to control, for example, the strength of monsters at least partially through my own research. I like control over the pacing, in general. The game implies multiple ways to play through the tech trees....and while you'll eventually want all of them, how you get there I thought was supposed to be part of game play. The description of "lord hammers, master spell, or master quest" basically kills it for me, because it'

I'm going to rattle off a few suggestions/observations for overland map and AI, and diplomatic standing adjustments. Overland- 1. As far as I can tell, the PRIMARY determining factor of an AI attack is the difference in power rating. Now, within power rating is the military strength rating, which has predominantly more impact than any other kind of rating I think. I.e, once you have a comparable military to the AI, ALL the other values that factor into power rat

What version are you playing? I haven't seen this happen since from around release.

Yes.

Just wanted to add on monsters, I've played probably 8 games over the last 4 patches, and I've yet to see anything stronger than T1 monsters. In this most recent version, I've got 100+ point bandit armies out on the maps, most of it is revealed, it's 224x224, and there are almost no monsters left. I've not seen anything harder than Bandit, Wolf and Spider in 500 or more turns. Now, I'm not researching adventuring, but there are level 4 sites on the map already. If someone has researched to Le

The AI hardly bothers you as it is now. Once you eclipse their power rating by about 20%, they'll never willingly attack you.

After several dozen games through the last few patches, there seems to a hierarchy to resource node spawns. 1. Food. 2. Materials. 3. Shards. 3. Tech. 4. Diplomatic Capital 5. Metal. 5. Crystal. 5. Mounts. 6. Gold. It also seems like about 65 to 75% of resources end up in clusters, the rest are single free floaters. I'm playing on GIANORMOUS maps though, so it may account for the map size when it chooses how many

That was (or still is?) a bug with adventuring techs for the Empire. It should be fixed now though.