Das123

Lol Tydorius. Love it :D Thanks Derek for sharing these insights. Always great to read. :)

[quote who="Sushikawa" reply="43" id="2876142"]Last night we had a fair amount of snow, enough for me to call into work, so I busted out AoW:Shadow Magic to see if it holds up to to the infamous rose colored nostalgia glasses...and it does. It had such beautiful maps, city sieges were a different type of battle all together, and the magic spells are sweeping, the differnt races, neutral cities, recruiting camps, game changing things that made the world more than a pretty map. Then

Frogboy, I really think you need to look at the ambient noise generated from the map as well as bringing the actual map to life. At present the sound is really weak. Play a random game of Age of Wonders, close your eyes, and then scroll around. The sound communicates so much of where you are in that game and can either make you feel hot, comfortable or cold. Elemental is really lacking in this area.

I can't really recall any monsters that were impossible to kill in the games I've played. For me, the problem with armour and weapons is the scaling of the numbers between each level. In most games as you progress unlocking better units or equipment the actual changes are subtle. While Elemental has been scaled back some-what the actual leap in terms of the battles is still really unbalanced. Kael, on another note, can you please explain again how the various battle calculatio

[quote who="Austinvn" reply="127" id="2865322"] I'm curious, as someone who seems to be a fan of both, how would you compare Distant Worlds to Space Empires IV or V? Does it have any kind of unit/ship customization approaching the SE level? How about complexity of the tech tree? Are the maps interesting/varied/fun to explore like SE - does each game play out differently?[/quote] It's been a while since I played SE but from what I remember you select a hull and fill it with compon

This has been an issue for a long time in the in-game stats. I highlighted this back in December... https://forums.elementalgame.com/401588 and in other posts since then without any response from Stardock. I think the only inaccuracy now is the To-Hit percentages but it would be good to get some sort of response back about it.

Nice work. :)

If we're doing an after evaluation report on the Elemental beta process, I concur with many of the comments here. 1. Most of the beta versions weren't stable enough to test properly. 2. With-holding crucial content felt like the whole beta process was a sham and that, as a tester, any feedback was inherently going to be largely irrelevant. 3. If content should be held back from the beta testers then the beta process should move to a closed beta at that point where sele

Congratulations Jon and Stardock. :)

I'm really happy that Stardock (and Elemental) have got this great pool of talent now. Jon, I guess you'll be reading this, so welcome aboard. :) As far as the Civ5 vs Elemental debate is concerned, I like playing CivV a lot. Love the hexes and the one unit per hex. I can understand the angst of people who have been purists about the Civ series but I'm not in that camp. The only reason I had Civ4 installed was to play Fall from Heaven.

Welcome aboard Dave. :)

Shafer has to be one of the appointments based on the timing of leaving Firaxis. :)

This is an excellent list, Brad. I can't wait to see where you take this game. It looks as though the important issues the community have been talking about are being addressed in a meaningful way. If this list is adhered to then I have no doubt Elemental will be THE fantasy strategy game and define the genre. Isn't quite there yet - but well on the way.

I agree with you, Wintersong. In no way was I wanting to be a purist about the races. An example would be looking at how the races reflect the lore in the games Dominions 3, Fall from Heaven, and modded Age of Wonders. In Dominions each race only reflects the lore of itself without reference to any game-world restrictions and so you have any number of races from different cultures playing on the same map. This 'works' because there is still personality within each race and there is co

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="58" id="2857079"] There are no undead in Elemental. Our challenge is to create new interesting creatures and archetypes without dipping into typical fantasy tropes. I love that Elemental doesn't have skeletons, elves and dwarves. But I understand when people ask for them, they want flavor, they want a wide variety of allies and enemies. And we want to provide it, but we want to do it in a new way. We want Elemental to be a ne

The issue with the Pirate Bay case is not that they were pirates, but rather that they knowingly promoted piracy via their technology. There are many legitimate file sharing torrents and so the authorities had to prove that the PB owners were complicit in the piracy. Where it gets messy is when you take it to an extreme. If a pirate distributes illegally obtained material via Outlook, is Microsoft also liable? Common sense would suggest not, but if they aren't liable do they need to

Nice concise list. :) Well done.

[quote who="TorinReborn" reply="110" id="2853126"]Ok, where can I buy this game? Preferably with the holiday discount [/quote] The game is exclusively through Matrix Games. [quote who="Heavenfall" reply="111" id="2853128"]I wish the military automation was much better. It is the least enjoyable part of the game, imho, as ships literally have a mind and life of their own. Send an armada to attack that system - expect half to turn around because they ran out of fuel, and the oth

[quote who="ElanaAhova" reply="108" id="2852965"]wow, this does sound like a 'rts' that isn't a clickfest, so much as a game where the plater can 'automate' many specific units, ships, etc., sort of like giving high level commands to the local commanders, and then the commanders, (friendly AI) attempts to implement the commands?[/quote] It is so much more than that as far as the automation is concerned. :) You can actually set the game to run completely on automatic mode if yo

Don't be put off by the 'RTS' aspect. I'm very much a TBS player and I really like to consider each turn when playing games. Distant Worlds is not a click-fest at all and with the pausing you never feel rushed. This game is so far ahead of the rest of the 4X genre games now. You can customise any and all aspects so that much of your empire can run on auto. Personally, I just set the game up so that fleets are controlled by me but individual ships are controlled by the AI. The AI will

Yes. I've stopped playing Elemental for now and DW is taking up all my strategy gaming time. Thoroughly enjoying the expansion. :)

Me too. This has been one of the biggest issue with Elemental from day one.

That looks cool, Tjashen. :) I'll be interested to see where you take your mod.

I'm now in the 'Yes. Buy now.' camp because it IS fun to play - even if there is a lot of room for improvement. Elemental is definitely one of the most ambitious games I've ever played. Most games are played within a fairly narrow scope but Elemental combines many concepts and thoughts which means getting the balance right is really tricky. The game being so ambitious makes it a really easy target for criticism because when you focus on individual elements such as the magic or the lac

I agree with the OP. The gameplay is now heading in the right direction and I am enjoying playing the game now but the races are really weak. Even before 1.0 was released this was highlighted. The lore around the game has also been discussed as being uber-shallow which has brought about two massive issues: 1. As highlighted in this post, the races are one-dimensional and boring. and 2. The game-world is dead. I'm just hoping at some point the engine and