Ace_2001

[quote who="Alstein" reply="9" id="2784138"]Maybe a mistake, but I think Brad has everything story planned out for this years in advance. Hence the book. [/quote] Which is a shame, and limits creative control and ability to respond to feedback. An expansion set that really shakes things up, adds some traditional fantasy races (with an Elemental twist) and revamps the Fallen (keep a few, make them very unique from the humans and each other) is really nee

Naval battles. (treat boats as a tileset type where the soldiers are aboard them and it's done via boarding actions?) A magic item system where items can be crafted and given to heroes or troops. (from damage bonuses to elemental resistances, invisibility, flight, etc.). Fantasy races. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lizardmen Randomly generated maps. Seasons once the world has been restored enough.

Criticism does not necessarily contitute a smear campaign. I'm highly critical of Elemental's setting. Primarily because of the fact although it's argued that considerable thought and effort has been placed in it, why are concepts recycled wholesale from Galciv II? The 'Dreadlords' there were a fun tongue-in-cheek reference to other 4x games having big-bads. But what purpose does it serve to copy-and-paste the Dreadlords and Arnor into Elemental's

Having monsters spawn from lairs and not thin air would be nice. It'd allow for situations where you could control the unclaimed hinterlands between two empires without it being a pure monster-infested mess. Making lairs both spawn monsters and being tied to items or resources/improvements would also make the game more dynamic and give a purpose to the adventuring mechanic. Your sovereign will want to clear out the mine, because it'll prevent the

I think that the tech to have large squad sizes should be unlocked from the start, but the researched techs should make it cheaper upkeep wise to have larger squads as it makes the logistics easier. That way you can have a single scout unit, or make a full peasant army for defense. The AI could also be adapted to tend towards building squads for defense/offense and single units for scouting and specialized roles. Having regular squads default as 6 units, cavalry

There's really no sense of religious life at all in the world of Elemental. Did people worship the Titans? Before them what did people worship, Dragons? Mages? Hero-worship? It seems to make sense for some of the Fallen to worship the Titans as gods, but what about the Kingdoms? How does a farmer rationalize the world they live in? Spirits tied to magic in the landscape? Deities real or imagined? Fleshing out a pantheon (objectively real or not in

At the moment, magic items seem a little sparse and all over the place. It'd be nice to vastly increase the options of magic items (elemental enhancements for weapons, etc. arrows of dispelling, etc.) However, this is geared at certain high cost end-game items that should be world-shattering that would be unlockable through magic research or questing. These items would require some sacrifice on the part of the sovereign, suc

Being able to research elemental specialization, and selecting a specific book to focus in (perhaps at the cost of learning/using spells from another book?) would be good. If for instance you've learned a few fire spells, and specialize in the book of water, you lose those spells and it's refunded as RP. Water specialization gives inherent bonuses and unlocks the 'end game' spells for that tree. So spells such as flood are only accessible for water specialists, volcano

Well perhaps instead of using it more, making spell research have a 'book specialization' tech. You research it and get to select a single book to have advanced spells from. It'd give bonuses to lower level spells and unlock new, higher level, spells. Also perhaps overall spell level research adds a base bonus to spells?

Well, space stations in Elemental would involve a whole mananaut tech tree culminating in dropping the moon on people. ;) However, a lot of those GalCiv 2 features listed would be nice to have. Particularly projected movement path and ETA.

Random was pretty common in feudal Europe, it'd make a fun game mechanic to be able to ransom champions once their armies have been defeated or to execute them.

Something else that would be easy to fix: For the love of god please spell 'breakthrough' correctly. This isn't a turn based stratergery game afterall.

Awesome! I love the inventory slot system too. One thing that could improve that is having a sidebar for trading with other heroes, swappable with the buy/sell menu when in friendly territory. That way a currently clumsy system could be handled in one menu.

Altering the system so instead of hard percents you gain points per population would also avoid end-game abuse of deleting houses in level 5 cities. Plus it'd be a more intuitive system. The higher level techs resulting in percent bonuses to production still would make sense and allows for specialization of towns.

Events leading to perks and flaws would be great. Rome: Total War had some perks and flaws that came out of tactical combat. Things such as earning a brutal reputation, or being a coward, etc. Fleeing a battle, for instance, might earn a coward perk and lower friendly morale. Doing the most damage in an army in a large battle might earn the brutal perk, lowering enemy morale. Razing cities may also add the brutal perk, or a 'ravager' one that results in getting

A solution, so the game isn't as utterly harsh on new players might be raiding- Bandits can loot a city when they attack and take money, materials, etc. out of your coffers (a percent tied to their level). If you don't have enough to pay, they raze the city. So, a bandit might take 12 gold and 6 materials when raiding that outpost, forcing you to train a peasant to guard it.

You bring up a lot of good points. Properly implemented spell combat systems with defenses, immunities, etc. could go a long way to balancing out the issues with a caster focuses army. For instance, spells such as armor, shield, immunity to normal missiles, magical screens, etc. would all allow a caster to fight weaker casters, normal armies, etc. An armor or shield spell acting like a 'shield' in a scifi setting, absorbing

I honestly don't see how anyone can defend the lore, especially taking a philosophical slant that clearly marks your putting more interest in it than the developers. Yes, that's a brutal comment, but when I go through menus for the quest display and read "goodies" I can't take any of the plot efforts seriously. The same applies for, as mentioning earlier, recycling the Dread Lords and Arnor as terms used. If it's supposed to be a sandbox with a pa

Well, going with the current lore: Why is the game set after the cataclysm? Shouldn't *we* be playing as the Titans who came from another dimension and are reshaping the world? That sounds like a much funner game to me, being the invading Titans (some good, some evil) waging wars and warping the land. As a campaign, it'd also be much more entertaining playing as the sole human channeler fighting this extra dimensional threat and playing these mythic forces, gods walkin

The current dynasty system is an interesting idea, but seems about half way to what it could be. Current issues: Unable to remarry with the death of a spouse. This can frustratingly end a portion of the game quickly for many players. The age counters. This has been brought up multiple times. Instead of a numerical count perhaps simply 'Child' 'Young Adult' 'Adult' and 'Elderly' would work. Drives the point home about ages without strange situations of a

This is a huge, game breaking issue for the late game. At present you can cast spells such as flood and curgen's inferno in a nation you're not at war with and annihilate entire cities with no reprecussions. A solution to this problem would be as follows: Whenever a strategic spell is cast within another sovereign's territory it invokes a diplomacy penalty for a set number of turns. As an example: I cast Curgen's Inferno in my own territor

There are significant issues with the setting, as outlined in the original post. When months ago reading the website when the backstory and timeline were mentioned several things led to immediate groans. Namely the use of "Dread Lords" and "Arnor" as terms. Having two mythic civilizations clash is fine, but please don't recycle terms from your other franchise, and be consistent with what you call them. Instead of the "Dread Lord XXXX" or the (even worse as it sounds like something fro