Hiho,
I have to admit while reading alot in the Forums, I rarely write anything. Nevertheless, as I have been playing around with Elemental since Beta 2 I want to share some of my thoughts as an TBS-Player since Civ I
I apologize if some parts are already covered by other topics or mentioned already, put I don't want to miss anything:
* Starting as a fresh players:I know it is Beta currently, but I strongly advise that there is some guide or tutorial (which is maybe covered hopefully by the first missions of the campaign). As it is currently, there is the need of several starts prior to understand the underlying system which is very unpleasant for new players. If this is something which would go into a demo too, in my opinion would be a No-Go for buying.
* Starting areas:I see a big improvement from Beta-2 to Beta-2A related to roaming monsters and resources. Nevertheless, played now several games it gives me a clear indicator that if you don't find any valuable resource next to you - preferable food provider requiring a low tech - it is a clear disadvandage compared to other players.
* Taking wrong decisions in the beginning:Currently the game allows for 'wrong' decisions in the beginning. Without starting a city and at least a small stable economy you can spend all your coins with aquiring champions. I don't know if this is a bug or not, but it happened several times that I had after aquisition a negative balance on my gold share. It takes quit some time adventuring to recover from this. The same goes for city spams - it tells you that you need 100 Gold for a new city. You build it only to find out that you have -400 on your account. This stops most of the progress, etc which I suppose that you can't keep up with the other empires afterwards.
* City development:There are several ideas, discussions on that in the forum. First of all, if the city spaming is not the intention there is a need of improvement as currently I recognized the game is by far more easy if I spam them. Why should I only build 2-3 cities if I'm much faster with research development and having higher incomes with more of them.
Secondly, if I don't find any valuable resource for food somewhere near my places I hardly can progress with my cities (if I remember correctly, only with a garden you can go to a level-3 city and thats it). In Beta-2 I was able to garden-spam at least one city to cover the need of the other city. If I have a food tile with one of my cities, gardens are more or less obsolete. This means, currently there is only black or white and therefore no need for a player to take a decision.
In Beta-2 it was possible with a cap to have several of the same improvements in a city. Which leads to a more focused dedicated city development plan. Now you can have an improvement once per city. With the space to build, the 'standard' building layout (meaning more or less build everything) -> no need for a player to take a decision or at least only to decide when to build what and not what to build. I understand that this may change if the other research trees comes into play, but as city development is disabled for the next Beta, I fear that the other tech tress will not unlock to many city improvement tiles.
To be honest, as City building (which is for me an equal part of a 4x game) is currently implemented it is only fun for the first 1-2 rounds when the game is fresh. Afterwards, as no real strategy or decision is required to be honest it could be that the computer builds them for me as well after I have decided where the city should go. It doesn't seems to be very challeging and compared to other global TBS games (MoM, Civ, Moo) it's rather a weak point even several of choices for buildings are there.
Something I didn't saw mentioned somewhere else. In the beginning I mentioned that currently city spaming is the prefered choice for a fast progress. After some 100 turns, this means that they can come close to each other. I think it would be a nice idea if such two connected city could form a sort of a Mega-city
Other suggestions: I think the idea and development of the city itself is nice to be tested. But to be honest, the system used by other games are more in the direction of feeling 'right'. I think there should be some factors which are only related to the local cities economics (e.g. food, 'hammers') and others which are global (research points, mana generation, incs). Having to deal with a local economics and global economics provides a more intuitive feel. For the food tiles, I would suggest to change them into something that would provide a benefit (e.g. + 2 food per city or + 10%) to food production for all connected cities. For those of you thinking that this may gives to much micromanagement please consider that this game is not only subject to tactical movement of troops but empire management as well. As we are playing a TBS, we have mostly enough time needed (except in Multiplayer, but here I would think of hours of gameplay and not only minutes)
*Armies:As far as my games go till now, armies are another weak point of the game. Even with improvements of movement, the costs for armies are by far to high. Currently I'm trying to aquire as much of champions as possible and change equipments with them. This seems more reasonable for the first 100-200 turns. Afterwards, connected to adequate resources and moved along the war tree you can create a decent - and compared to my other strategy - army to move out and taking opportunies. With the concept of champions and the Sov the main audience for an army are enemy countries. If you don't meet them early, you concentrate in the city developement and the research. There are in fact too less needs for an army to fight for which can't be taken by the Sov & a company of champions.
* UI:The UI itself is currently for most of the items very nice. There is mainly two parts I somehow miss:
Most important: I miss an overview of my armies and cities. The left handed list I use mainly to identify if for my cities or Armies anything to do is left. BUT I would like to see for the cities an overview of improvements and bonuses are there which would provide me an benefit if I produce something there or not. With the current system, I have to make to many clicks only to identify where it is the best choice for example to recruit an army (speed improvements, recruitment costs, etc). Additionally, the left bar is sometimes missleading as I have to wait for my city to gain a new level to make new improvements - it is highlighted which means I should produce something but no tiles are available anymore. And added that the recruitement and the improvement has two different layers the click-fest is additionally increasing. Generally, I like to have most of the critical information on screen, the idea itself is nice but the current implementation is still to weak and I think most of the time I miss something. Especially later with the retail game where you play and pause and may not remember by hard which city provides which benefit.
Secondly but not so crucial: a comprehensive list of finished tasks / actions as a sort of a log if someone wants to re-read something. Currently, after deleting the right list, its gone.
* Research:In my humble opinion the research needs some general improvements in what is beeing given as facts. Currently it is more a try and error if you achieve a new breakthrough as it is not very descriptive. I think this was mentioned already several times.
Generally, I like the beta as it is as it still posses a lot of area's to understand und see the working gears behind. But it leaves you with a lot of try and error which for some cases could be that it's even a show-stopper.
looking forward - the basis is there to be a long wished perfect game for me
Sorry for my rather long post, but I was writing as the topics approaches my mind
Addition with a mix of Armies / WarResearch:
Currently the system gives you the opportunity to design a army similiar to champions / Sov related to equipment. The only difference is that the champs / Sov's can re-equip anytime whereas the army have their equipment as created. I would suggest that the unit designer may goes into a bit of a different way: 1 slot for a weapon, 1 for the gear and one for accessoirs. But in addition to that, having through the research path different kind of classes available (e.g. peons, berserks, etc.) which can be combined with different gears. Add to that, that there are different skills available to the classes wich are unique - think of MoM - it would be more interesting to create different kind of units instead of aiming for the highest equipment available.
Br
Wyl
yeah i cant stop saying the same
atm this is gamebreaking
you NEED the right rarities at start
and like discussed in my topic, putting more ores and food wont solve the problem
still you get a rare needed resource or you dont get, even if the chance of getting it is 80 90% there will be situation where you dont, and you will just lose badly
well imo you did something wrong
i always hire every champion i encounter and i never got negative
also i usually get VERY positive, often 1000 2000 after some turn, then i just start ignoring money so dunno reallly how far
as it stands now i am more incline thinking money is too easy to make in this build
Other suggestions: I think the idea and development of the city itself is nice to be tested. But to be honest, the system used by other games are more in the direction of feeling 'right'. I think there should be some factors which are only related to the local cities economics (e.g. food, 'hammers') and others which are global (research points, mana generation, incs). Having to deal with a local economics and global economics provides a more intuitive feel. For the food tiles, I would suggest to change them into something that would provide a benefit (e.g. + 2 food per city or + 10%) to food production for all connected cities.
i sorta agree with this
even though i like enough the actual system, it gives sometimes a bad feeling in few situations, too easy with new cities for example, and too much dependant on a single rare resource that could boost the WHOLE EMPIRE
some tweak is needed imo
But if this is a "wrong" decision for one player, it may be exactly what another wanted. The idea they've always had behind Elemental is that you can just run around with your Sovereign and play a more RPG-style game without getting involved in city building much. On this one, it's gotta be up to the player. The game can't destinguish between a player who knows what he's doing and one who doesn't, after all. And if someone messes up like you describe, well, it only takes one time to learn.
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean that not all the breakthroughs listed on the research screen actually pop up for selection when the research finishes? That's because breakthroughs are chance-based, and the color gives you an idea of how likely you are to get it (green = usually pops up, red = rare to pop up).
As it is currently, if resources are needed to have an appropiate start, I have to say that there is something wrong with the balancing. The resources should provide an plus to the current economy and not beeing a game-breaker.
I agree that the game should provide a lot of different options. But in my opinion, the balance of guidars should never get into such a negative balance thats very hard to overcome anymore. I'm fine if I'm zero balance leaving without option to recruit any additional champ or building a city at that moment. But a game should ever try to avoid that you get into a region where the option is to start a new game because of 2 mouseclicks. If I identify that my strategy or gameplay doesn't fit but had fun until that time, thats fine
Thats fine, my post was more related to the subjet that the description of the breakrough is missleading or even doesn't display what is the subsequent options I can unlock with it. For example, research housing: It is nowhere stated that it requires a certain city level to be effective. If I choose this as my research breakthrough, it could mean that I have no need currently as my cities are to small (only a hamlet) and would be more wise to spend the breakthrough in an other improvement.
Oh. Yeah. Right now there are a bunch of things that put you in negatives that aren't supposed to. There's not supposed to be a way for you to get into the negatives, if you don't have the money it should not allow you to build it. But a few of these checks (and some others with Essence) are currently a bit bugged. I thought your issue was more on the design, that you could start hiring champions right away and not leaving yourself enough money to grow a city quickly. I expect the negative stuff will be fixed up.
Pretty sure Frogboy posted somewhere that they're working on giving more info on research. There's a little bit of that, if you open the main research window and select a breakthrough, it will list what other breakthroughs it can lead to - I'm pretty sure I wasn't dreaming when I saw that. But yes, there's still a bunch more work to be done in providing the necessary information. Also the Elementalopedia will have an overall tech tree in it when it goes in the game, which will help with the big-picture planning.
I don't know, I kind of like the idea that you can buy an army on the promise of conquest. You go out, adventure, discover some of the treasure you need to fund your expedition. Of course, the only time I've had the game immediately slap me into negatives was when I started next to a stack of four adventurers. I ask them to join, and instead of charging me the price they list, they charge me like four times that price which is like 800 gildar. So, that check isn't just somewhere where you shouldn't be allowed to go negative but seemingly a bug in it's own right if that is what you encountered.
I don't know that I see not starting with food and another bonus puts you at such a disadvantage that the random generator should just arbitrarily place every player in such an ideal location for their initial city. When the game is closer to a finished product, it shouldn't matter what resources you start next to for every player. But you do have some people who start a game of Civ IV and if they don't feel they have enough resources they'll just hop into the world builder and fix themselves up. I personally like to play the hand I'm dealt, and while not having any food resources available for your starting town means it won't prosper until later in the game, it is also a reason to go out and find a location that may have access to multiple food resources as your second town. I suppose for those that want such a thing, a resource rich option could be added? I mean, some people will want to pit every opponent they possibly can on a small or tiny map, should that map then be flooded with resources instead of forcing conflict over what is there? A resource rich gameplay option would allow those players to get what they wanted from the game, while allowing those that think that every city needs to start in prime real estate to enjoy the game how they want to.
I'm a gamer who prefer challenges. But to be honest, currently the resource tiles need some tweaking as they are so much more overpowered that its not really a challenge anymore except you like to have an 'iron-man' mode
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