Mistwraithe

[quote who="cpl_rk" reply="50" id="2773596"]The problem with this is you'd have to alter the whole item store price scheme & trade item price perception.[/quote] I believe this would be easily solved by making monsters randomly drop appropriate items to compensate for the less gold. Right now you (and Stardock) are assuming that the gold from monsters will be used to buy the horribly overpriced store items and therefore it is balanced. But what if you use regular squads of

[quote who="Brainsucker" reply="6" id="2773417"]You just want your adventurer go to the next level of dungeon. Honestly, I hate Adventure Tech and hope it would changed[/quote] Everyone knows that you need to go up a level to go down a level. Standard D&D, except in this case going up a level means going up a level of technology [e digicons]:grin:[/e] Seriously, I don't mind this one too much. It isn't particularly logical but it doesn't scream out

I've also received a second copy I think, although I haven't opened the box yet to see exactly what it was. Started with Elemental normal pre order, then upgraded to the LE when it was announced. Received my first copy of LE 3 or 4 days ago, then yesterday another similar sized box from Stardock arrived. I presume it is another copy. I don't know if they figured it had gone missing and sent another one, or what. Personally I would much prefer that Stardock made as much money a

Yeah serious reading comprehension fail by many of the people who posted on this page. It isn't about whether you can make money, it is about how unbalanced the ways of making money are. Killing Monsters >>>>> Gold Mines >>>>> Everything else

Gunnergoz: That was the OPs point though - there are only two sensible ways of making gold currently, either gold mines buffed up with the stacking multipliers, or killing monsters as you advise. Having only two viable ways of making such an important resource as gildar is pretty poor so I think you can make a very good case for the game needing more gildar sources. At the same time the current sources, particularly monsters, should be toned down. I like the idea of making mon

[quote who="Sethai" reply="50" id="2771147"]who when applying common sense would ever guess that a short sword would double you movement rate, that first strike would be so important, or that a fireball would do the same total damage to one guy standing in a square as to 10?[/quote] Exactly. In many cases it isn't whether the combat system is complicated, it is more whether it seems complicated and a system which behaves illogically seems more complicated than it really

I haven't voted for which one you should focus on first because I personally don't think you can focus on just one at a time. Not if you want a great result anyway. I think what is needed is a global design which fits all the major gameplay elements of the game together into a framework were all key strategies are viable and balanced against each other. The design then needs to drill down lower and lower into each level of the game making sure that each level is both balanced and has

You couldn't have the movement being simultaneous I think. Each player would still have to take turns doing movement and declaring their attacks, then all attacks from that players units are resolved. However any automatic counterattacks could obviously be resolved at the same time, then the action switches to the other player. Some interesting ideas here.

All due respect to the OP, I can see what has got him excited, but I can think of dozens (maybe hundreds?) of things I would currently rather have the Elemental programmers work on than trying to do this. Maybe in a much, much later version once the gameplay and balance is polished but not right now IMO.

[quote who="Archonsod" reply="15" id="2768393"] the essence mechanics are working fine.[/quote] Unfortunately I don't agree here. The only sensible way to play the magic game is to recruit level 1 heroes, give them some essence somehow (imbuing is most obvious but one game I had a Ring of +1 Essence which was brokenly powerful), join them into a tough stack and then kill some monsters. They level up to L3-4 almost instantly. Since they already have some essence they can then b

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="50" id="2770728"]New Tactical Battle System [/quote] Interesting idea and good to see you guys are thinking laterally. Personally I'm not convinced. It could feel pretty random and be difficult to plan your tactics unless you have a good understanding of who gets to move when (unless the UI is extremely helpful about this but not sure there would be the screen real estate). This would mean that all squares have the same moveme

[quote who="malekith" reply="74" id="2770537"]Namely, if I have room for a new city, it is *always* in my best interest to build that city; no thinking involved. Increasing spacing requirements reduces the number of times I need to hit the pioneer button, but it doesn't make me think about it any more. Expansion needs to be a decision. I should have to weigh whether it's worth adding an additional mine to my empire or blocking off a mountain pass. It should be possible

Frogboy needs to play Age of Wonders : Shadow Magic again. I had some great tactical battles in that game, real nail biters. It isn't perfect by any means but it does produce much better battles than Elemental does.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="58" id="2768458"] Quoting solidsmooky, reply 56I want a business war game ._.Management by Avalon Hill is a decent business 'war' game. Used to play it back in the 60s. [/quote] The 60s? You... you aren't really 90 years old are you?!? (as your profile says) I mean that would be cool, but I assumed it was just a random birth date you entered (I know mine is!). [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

It is not whether you can get to +50 econ, it is HOW you get there. The only realistic way to get there is via Gold mines. I agree with the OP that it should be possible to build a decent economy without Gold mines. The mark of a good strategy game is choices and multiple paths. There should be multiple paths to making money and right now pretty much all of them are in the Adventure tech tree (ie finding gold mines or increasing monster spawn level).

He has a point though. Gold mines are the only really viable way of building an economy early game (and they still make up the bulk of the economy late game too!). Sure gold is useful in real life too but somehow real life historical kingdoms managed to get a lot done and accumulate a lot of wealth without having huge gold deposits! In fact pretty much every big and wealthy historical city was known as wealthy because of trade, production, etc, rather than because they were al

Also in NZ, also haven't received my LE and also haven't received any emails telling me it has been shipped. I realise that maybe international shipping could take longer than it so far has (tho it is usually pretty quick for other things I order from the US) but it would be nice to get some confirmation that something was happening and they hadn't just forgotten me. As for those saying it is out of Stardock's control and telling the OP off for complaining here

Agree entirely with OP. And I certainly hope that Brad's AI comment doesn't mean that they won't change it because the AI couldn't handle it. My hope is that they spend a little bit of time making easy improvements to tidy the game up and release all these little improvements as patches, THEN they step back and spend a lot of time making a complete rethink of various broken or poor mechanics and release a huge patch which brings the game up to what it should have been. <p

[quote who="Mtn_Man" reply="5" id="2763923"]If the game had Sid Meier's name on the box, it would be pulling 8's easily.[/quote] If this game had Sid Meier's name on the box then I would be sending it back for a refund. The only reason I'm sticking with it is because I like Stardock and I think they will eventually fix the gameplay to a reasonable standard (whether they will turn it into the classic that it could be is another question). [quote who="Drala2k" rep

[quote who="random_target" reply="6" id="2759521"]The main problem I see with the randomness of resources, is that they appear when you take the relevant tech, but only around your cities.[/quote] This is so true. It is like the problem in Oblivion where it is better to take stats you don't use much (or at least can control the use of and don't care about) as your main stats so that you don't level up before you have had time to record enough uses of the really stats yo

[quote who="ArcaneBoozery" reply="11" id="2760736"]I am also for making monsters drop items for adventurers rather than money or anything else for cities/armies. That would be a simple way of rewarding adventuring types without ruining things for army/city types.[/quote] A simple but elegant solution. If a noticeable proportion of the reward for killing monsters was in items which were only really useful for adverturers then the problem you describe dramatically reduces

[quote who="VR_IronMana" reply="9" id="2760762"]Puppies need to be nerfed, not thrown into rivers. Their cuteness (and chewing) is overpowered. [/quote] I told the devs that in the beta and time after time they ignored me. Not only that but they added Wargs, which are just big puppies that are less cute but do far more chewing and are therefore horribly unbalanced. They totally have to fix this NOW or I'm not going to play Elemental again for another 3 hours!<

[quote who="Answulf" reply="8" id="2758950"]That's how I felt about Civ4, for the most part, and I think that sentiment is "left over" from Civ3 -> Civ4, where not a lot changed and I wasn't crazy about some of the changes. [/quote] I find it intriguing that you feel not much changed between Civ3 and Civ4. To my feel Civ3 was a worse 'game' than Civ2 because it actively tried to squeeze all the fun out of the things I liked about Civ. There was nothing to be

No way this is the beta testers fault for suggesting changes. It might be partly the fault of some of the more 'yes man' beta testers but even then Stardock are the professionals, they should have been able to adjust for both extremes of the hate/love spectrum. As Frogboy has openly admitted the problem wasn't the beta testers advice, it was a chronic case of group think where Stardock was blind to what was really going on and were living in their own little self reinforcing world.

Fully in agreement with those who say you should start with an action point pool (which can be increased by levelling up, magical enhancements, etc) and then all actions have a cost with that cost influenced by your equipment. Stmorpheus had a good example of that. So using his system where a particular unit has 100 points and continuing along that line, you could have this: Move 1 square into plains: 20 Move 1 square into swamp: 40 Move 1 square with plate: +5