Well, let me put it this way: You have to pay the extra $20 (or 15 Euros in my case) to get what FE promised (but failed) to be. I never enjoyed FE much. All games were very similar, AI plays by completely different rules, UI was catastrophic. FE-LH is still not perfect, but a big step forward.
There is scrolling in tactical, but not by moving the mouse to the edge (like in strategic map view). You have to use click & drag to move the map view. Yes, this is somewhat inconsistent and without having played GalCiv2 (another Stardock game), I probably would not have guessed it myself. Regarding your UI suggestions, I absolutely agree. Let me add some more things: 1) We need a "move" hotkey, e.g. "M", which lets units move along their path until their movement is used
I am surprised that no one mentioned the Age of Wonders series yet; they are TBS games in the tradition of Master of Magic, just like FE is. The newest game, AoW II Shadow Magic (from 2002!), is still superior to FE is many aspects, most notably user interface, magic, and tactical battles.
1. mostly yes. 2. yes (under the current circumstances) and no (in general). 3. yes 4. yes 5. yes Detailed answers: 1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly? - Yes for monsters with lairs which are woken up. They should (try to) destroy whoever was disturbing them and then go back to where they came from. But random behaviour is absolutely okay for wandering monsters. 2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerf
I know that some people play on the hardest level and win. Fine for them. But there are not only hardcore strategy gamers (which happen to be vastly overrepresented on forums like this), but also casual gamers like myself. FE in the current beta is simply too frustrating for me. Monsters keep razing my towns and if a expand slowly (to be able to defend myself properly), once I meet my neighbors, their empires are twice as big as myself or even bigger, they start demanding tribute and declare
Yes, the Civilization way of dealing with world wonders is not ideal (you can get beaten by 1 turn), but I personally consider the Elemental version to be even worse. It makes everything a research race instead of a build race. A build race is the more logical thing for world wonders, but from a game mechanics point of view, a research race is equally good. However, the current system is very intransparent and if Stardock want to keep this mechanics, some important thing should be fixed:<br /
[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="6" id="3237042"]Personally I wish a few random numbers were rolled upon world creation[/quote] Too risky. Bugs will never be exterminated completely and I personally always prefer "replay the last few minutes" over "restart from the beginning".
I pre-ordered the game a few days ago and played 1.5 games so far (game #2 kept crashing on "end turn", so I abandoned it). The game is promising, but there is some work left. I know what a beta version is, so I have no problem with this. I also know that I cannot expect a full manual and have to find out many things myself. But after some experimenting and searching, several questions remain unsolved. Can someone please help a total beginner in the world of elemental? * The most a