Taking a break from the game until they patch it a bit I think. There's potential here for sure, but the AI seems to be totally nonfunctional right now, and I've run into bugs in pretty much every single area of the game.
I've played two games on normal now where all I did with my caster hero was summon up one of each summon, and go on a rampage, killing every AI with that single stack of units. You'd think after I wiped out a few civs, the remaining AIs might be more hostile towards me, but nope, no declarations of war, no hostility, just 'hi, nice to meet you!', then I walk in and kill their cities with the summoner stack. I'll bump up the difficulty, but so far I have yet to even have an AI
I deleted the two ships they gave me, and they're apparently needed to reach a backdoor behind some obsidian gate. The cities that gave the ships won't talk to me, and I can't build new ones. Is this game over, or is there another way to get new ships?
This is a widespread issue not limited to any one area - even when the cursor is correct, there are a lot of little buttons that are way, WAY too small. Even the tiny, tiny 'X' in the corner of windows to close them is incredibly, annoyingly small. And pushing ESC brings up the main menu, instead of closing a window!
Debug http://evilgamer.dreamhosters.com/public/stupidpics/debug.err Crash Data http://evilgamer.dreamhosters.com/public/stupidpics/Elemental1_00-2010-08-23T14-53-28-806.zip Save File http://evilgame
Another vote for custom currency names. By default, people will just refer to currency in any fantasy game as 'gold' in multiplayer matches, and 'credits' in any scifi game, it's unavoidable. No one will use . However, players will _read_ whatever you write regularly, so if it sounds good, it does affect the flavor of the single player game. Having a description of the currency somewhere would help (what is it? bits of magic crystal?
I dislike 'all or nothing' binary states, as they encourage save/reload play, and are generally either really broken, or really useless Ditch the % chance of success (save/reload abuse, or randomly lucky power gain), and instead simply tie the charm power to its potential targets A level 1 charms level 1 foes, a level 5 charms level 5 foes, etc Play around with that, and if it works fine, leave it, if not, add an interesting downside to make casting the spell an intere
A good way to tackle this would be to come up with a list of 'specials' that can be applied to any city in the game. Each special is completely unique, and once it is tied to a city, that city is 'special' in that manner for the rest of the game. 1) Thematically tie specials to the various races/backstory elements This instantly gives specials a leg up over generic upgrades, because they ARE unique, and (if well written), will become memorable and instantly recognizabl
Ditch the concept of workers entirely Workers add monotonous and tedious micromanagement that adds nothing interesting to the game Instead, focus on what _is_ the interesting decision making here - where is an improvement built, what does it do, and what does it cost? That could be a road, a fort, a watchtower, a magical construct, or an economic enhancer of some sort (irrigation, waterwheels, mines, whatever) The point isn't really what the exact items are, so
THE GOOD 1) Tremendous variety Huge and interesting variety of possible wizard customization options, racial choices, heroes, and randomized maps with two planes of existence 2) Great sense of exploration Randomized maps (again), the two planes, wide range of creatures, spells, events, artifacts. Filled to the brim with stuff to encounter, acquire, or battle 3) Broad scope You g
I really did not like it in GalCiv2. It completely killed any interest I might have had at 'getting into' the universe, so I really don't care about the Drengin or Yor or whoever the races were, they were all just 3d models to be manipulated/squished underfoot. Similarly I'd just stop reading the tech info, as it was invariably a mildly funny-to-unfunny quip about the technology.