I just wanted to say that after stumbling accross EWOM I am extremely excited about the game, that, at last there is a nice fantasy/rpg/strat/turnbased/4x experience with good multiplayer support coming out.
My favorite fantasy 4x game has been AOW:Shadow Magic, which I still consider one of the most technically perfected fantasy 4x's ever made and which this game seems very similar to (which is a great thing).
Having read and watched a lot of the videos and info about the game I was just wondering about a few things:
1. In multiplayer how does it handle tactical battles? In AOW:SM you had to watch others fight which was a bit strange. Of course you wouldn't fight every battle tactically when a result was obvious but for the closer battles it was essential.
2. Can you craft magic items? This was one thing I loved about AOW:SM.
3. Although there are human types of units you can create from your population can you also create more exotic units rather than just recruit or train from diplomacy/adventuring? I.e could I find an item and start creating undead units?
4. AOW:SM had the main map, an underground map and a shadoworld map that layered onto the main map through gateways and stairways. Is there any scope for extra maps to be tacked on to the main map? Could dungeons cover this do you think?
It would be great to create dangerous dungeon/seperate maps that players have to fight through to get items to win rather than just slog it out with each other on the main map. AOW:SM had some great Lord of the Rings type win conditions that you could create based on item triggers and event triggers.
5. Multiplayer race tactics were used in AOW:SM as players played their turns out at the same time. Will this happen with EWOM? For example just as the turn begins two opposing armies are next to a city they both plan to attack, there is then a race to attack in real time to stop the other player attacking before you do. This added some excitement to AOW:SM but sometimes was a bit silly with units being quickly positioned before any enemy players could respond, so its semi-rts sometimes. I don't mind this too much but just interested.
Anyhow I just liked to say I think stardock has provided pc strategy gamers with some hope for the future, with dumbed down, cloned re-hashes coming out it nice to see turnbased/strategy titles that are original and provide huge scope for modding and development being produced.
I really hope this is an AOW:SM killer and will enable me to play an up to date fantasy RPG/4x with the depth and elements that made AOW:SM so amazing.
1. Don't think anybody knows yet, multiplayer and tactical battles haven't been live at the same time in anything publically released.
2. No. Looks like in the expansion.
3. Not that I know of.
4. Not sure.
5. Far as I know it's still simultaneous turns, so yes you're moving at the same time.
Most of your questions cannot be sufficiently answered at the moment (no crafting, dungeons and triggers on day-0 though), but one thing is for certain: When Elemental will be released it won't be as intricate as AoW:SM. Nevertheless there is a promising prospect for the game to become a AoW:SM killer and much more thanks to the integrated modding capabilities and the company behind the project.
I can certainly answer your title question: AOW:Shadow Magic Killer?
By a long shot since this game will have an AI and lots of difficulty levels. Even MOM is an AOW:SM killer in that regards. I don't know what that crap was they called an ai that they put into AOW:SM but I could beat several ai opponents on their highest difficulties. Mainly due to that silly feature of kill the wizard lose the whole game. Sadly Elemental has that crap also but I'm hopeful the ai is smart enough to escape and build things to reduce that chance in this game. If not then this game will be no better than AOW:SM and MOM will still reign supreme.
Multiplayer wise though I wouldn't expect too much. This game is geared toward the single player experience. It will have MP but it's not the most important thing to Stardock and Brad. They will tweak it I'm sure and try to balance it as much as they can without effecting the single player experience but that is about it.
Well age of wonders 2 was more about the campaigns then the skirmish mode I thought. The AI wasn't perfect, but it was solid enough to give you a challenge in the campaigns and certainly way better then MoM which was famous for it's abyssmal AI. I wouldn't necessarily expect the elemental AI to be any better on release, there was a very recent developer journal saying that it's nowhere close to being ready.
The Age of Wonders series has been my all time favourite games since they were released. They are now getting really old but I still enjoy playing them immensely. I too am hoping that Elemental is the AoW Killer but at this stage I still find AoW better than any of the beta versions. But as has been said, the Elemental betas weren't demos so we really won't know until the game is released next week.
I think that in the long-term Elemental will prove to be an incredible game but there are still too many questions left unanswered at this stage.
Comparing the beta to AoW (which is unfair I know) I think AoW is much more immersive in scenery and races. The tile scale has worked better for me in AoW tactical battles. And the unobtrusive hex maps have been miles better than the large grid in the beta. We have been told Elemental is way different than what we experienced during beta testing so other than the hex vs grid issue I'm hoping to be very pleasantly surprised next week.
Age of Wonders 2, and Shadow Magic were strong games that I've always felt I never got as much out of as I could have. AoW 1 however was a disapointing disaster, primarily due to horrible balance and AI. It is in fact the primary example that I would give for why I'm afraid of the lack of balance and AI testing being done for elemental.
Not exactly. Brad Wardell said he will continue to improve the AI through the life-cycle of the game simply because he'll become better at playing it, so he'll want to code those new strategies into the AI. As far as I know, he never said that the current AI code was "nowhere close to being ready" (unless you have a link to where he said this).
That's not at all what he meant - Brad said he will continue to work on it. That doesn't mean it won't be good on release, just that it will get better. Gal Civ 2 was praised for its great AI but they continued to improve it for about 2 years.
Ah, here's the journal:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/390262
August 5, 2010: ' This weekend I have to really get on the AI. It’s still nowhere near where I want it to be for release. Heck, it doesn’t even do the “Your civilization makes me laugh, give us 50 gold or we’ll crush you!” type stuff. ' -Frogboy
He never said that the AI is "nowhere close to being ready", he said it's nowhere near where he wants it to be which appears to mean adding things like flavor text. And that was over two-weeks ago that he said that, and if he's been focusing on polishing the AI then he's had plenty of time to whip it into shape.
About question three, the answer is that its possible, but we don't know what will be in the final version. During the beta there was an "Ogre camp" resource which you could build on that would enable the city that harvested it to train ogres. So even if there aren't many trainable monsters, there will definitely be the capability to mod them in.
He said that the AI is nowhere close to where he wants it to be, and gave an example of a extremely basic interaction that has not even been implemented yet. I certainly don't get from this that the AI is great except for missing flavor text. I think your interpretation may be extremely optimistic, but I guess we will know soon enough (and I hope that your right). But a consistent element in both beta reports and developer journals has been issues with the AI. Major AI improvements also tend to take a lot longer then 2 weeks, even when there is a whole team and a solid group of beta testers working on it.
The AI in beta 4 was smarter then previously, but still not very smart. To be fair, beta 4 was the first time the full game was assembled at once for public consumption, so it's not surprising the AI didn't know how to do some things yet. They've had a fair bit of time since them to hammer away at it with all the systems in place and largely locked down (except for bug fixes).
So there's no question the release AI will be better then the beta 4 AI. How much so is a mystery, but the GalCiv 2 AI was pretty good and it's the same people working on it.
My guess is by the expansions a lot of that content will be in, either officially or through mods.
That said, the game has stuff AOW didn't have, like more customizable units, an actual AI, a better economic system, etc.
AOW: SM was killed by FFH to me, so no need to kill something already dead.
However this particular quote no longer applies.. this image shows this is already in the gold version..
I am sure there were other things in the gold version's AI, that was not yet implemented on Aug 5th. futher more I expect more change with the AI by day 0 then are on the disk so a quick update after a install on Aug 24th will give you the current best AI at that time..
Brad has take time off the fall just to keep working elemental and specifically the AI to compensate for the things learned and changed after initial release you can see it mention here in his recent interview on firing squad..
direct quote from Brad:
entire article here:
AOW a 4x empire builder like CIV,MOM,Elemental? I think not sir.
AI is a lot more then just implementing features though. It's not what the AI is capable of doing as much as when does it decide to do it, and does it make sense. In fact it's often better not to implement features at all unless you know the AI will be able to use them apropriately. Figuring out how well a feature is being used and what changes should be made often takes a long time as you may need to play through a game many times and at many levels of difficulties and circumstances to see a big picture of how things actually work. And then once you have that information, of course it takes time to actually code the changes. This is why it's normally something that's done by a team of beta testers over a few months.
And what makes you so sure that Stardock hasn't done that? Brad only said that the AI wasn't where he wanted it two-weeks ago. That's a lot different than saying that the AI was non-existent or completely untested at that time, which is what you're inferring. My guess is that he's been adding the final touches to a largely finished AI and not that he's spent the past two-weeks creating it from scratch.
Thanks for all the replies and information.
For people who didn't play much of AOW: Shadow Magic (Not Just AOW, there is a big difference) I just wanted to correct a few assumptions.
1. Killing the wizard did not end the game. It stopped you using the wizard for a period of time before he/she re-spawned. Without the availability of global spells this could be a real pain but would not end the game. (unless it was specified in setup of a custom map)
2. AOW:Shadow Magic was by far the most complete and moddable 4x game available I still think even now with incredible depth and flexibility. Seriously you have to play a lot of AOW:SM before you 'get' the level of depth available in the game even in its vanilla form with the map maker you could create complex triggers related to items and characters really generating unique maps.
3. It certainly was a 4x empire builder with research trees (spells), city expansions (buildings), influence (which appeared in AOW:SM before CIV I think), exploration, inventories for Heroes and creatures, as well as creature evolution (dragons) experience, diplomacy and much much more. Seriously if you havent played AOW:SM to any degree I advise you do so, it was and still is the most advanced RPG/Fantasy 4x. It had its problems but overall was a fantastic game and much under rated particularly as its still 10 years old and still holds its own IMHO.
4. The AI wasn't fantastic but provided a fair challenge particularly when it 'cheated' lol. However I tended to play mainly multiplayer with a couple of AI's thrown in as cannon fodder.
I think EWOM looks really interesting, and I hope will have many features that I mentioned added as it grows. It certainly has some nice unique features already and with expansion could prove a fantastic system. The only thing I am a little concerned about from the videos is that the graphics particularly the map look a little bland, like a sketch in style (when fully zoomed in). Maybe it will grow on me, maybe it will look a lot different in the final game. Its a shame the multiplayer may not be that developed as I play mostly MP, and for me this could be a real problem. Sins has brilliant MP and has really really come along from the original release with fantastic add-ons, I hope Elemental follows this lead as I really would like to see the future of Fantasy/4x gaming in a game that can hold its own for 10 years like AOW:SM.
Just to add a little more. My comments strongly lean towards MP play. I must admit Campaigns in games don't interest me that much. My main hope and something AOW:SM couldn't do was allow me to either play a smaller intense map that you could wrap up in an evenings play or (where AOW:SM fell down) play a long term sprawling map where me and my fellow players could while away hours exploring and expanding our empires enjoying an experience comparable to the single player where final battles are truly epic and generate in our own way a story of our game which I think EWOM could really be a great solution. I hope though that updates won't invalidate multiplayer saves.. !!
My main point is what was said on Aug 5th was/is no longer the case and that Brad has committed to working on the AI for a good long while to help compensate for tactics he did not think of ( I mean come on all of us trying our damnedest to whoop the AI is bound to expose new flaws, which btw always happens) and to help deal with the new spells/ things they add in future feature add on / tweaks.. I am under no delusions that the Day 0 AI will be be the most ultimate AI ever.. However I am more then confident it will be immensely better the it was in when he wrote the Aug 5th post.. Simply due the the time and efforts he has / will be putting in..
If elemental goes even half the way I hope/expect it can. (several expansions/campaigns, add on paks (spells, items and quests), let alone mods) this game will continue to evolve as long as a) Stardock likes it and supports it ... (remember this is the game they designed in part because its what they wanted to play). consumer interest supports it.. and c) (I really hope for this) Games built by Stardock using the same engine with neat new twists.. (Fallout like realms, Alien / Space games, heck how about one based on GURPS Deadlands) Weeeee......
AoW:SM may have been a nice MP game, but it's SP play was just terrible.
Boring, not difficult, repetitive...
The AI was just completely unable to provide any kind of a challenge once the player got past the initial learning curve (which wasn't that steep in the first place).
Dom3 is by far a superior game, though again, MP only if you want a challenge.
There is also supposed to be a mechanism of gaining special units by conquering neutral cities. I think it may have been in Beta 4 but I didn't play it enough to encounter them. I expect there will be some interesting units you can pick up but I have no idea what form they may take or how rare they are.
Yeah your quite right. I am exclusively talking about skirmish or MP maps not the campaign, in this regard it was awesome,
Well he didn't just say it wasn't where he wanted it, he said it was nowhere close to where he wanted, that's an important distinction when the game is very close to being released. And regarding AI testing, any features that didn't exist in any form 2 weeks ago will be untested by their vary nature (an certainly AI testing was very limited in the closed beta). Anyway it's pointless to argue about this too much with the release so close, before long we will have time to see for ourselves. I do at least trust that eventually the AI will become respectable.
The difference in the ai of AOW:SM and Elemental is the ai in AOW:SM was never any good and was never improved to be any good. I beat it countless times just going for the ai capitals and their wizards. Brad has said he will continue to work on this ai for a long long time and improve it. GalCiv2 ai is one of the best I've ever played and he has lived up to his word on that game and I fully expect him to on this one as well. AOW will become a hasbeen wannabe MOM replacer and I only ever found fun in the first one since that one you had to clear the map of the races not just kill one individual ai unit. Plus you could also take the leader off the map in that one as well. A feature I wish Brad would implement in this game as well since I like to play to the last man the last city the last castle or as in MOM the last spell of mastery. MOM's ai on impossible and even hard was much more challenging than the ai of Shadowmagic or AOWII. At least it tried to beat you. The AOW series just goes back n forth up and down the roads the majority of the time.
Hmm....now that I remember more about AoW 2, I do seem to remember that the AI was definitely lacking. I guess it was only ever challenging in campaigns because of the number of units that it threw at you. That could still be fun though. The sad thing though is that the AI is AoW 2 was still leagues better then the AI in AoW 1. And AoW 1 made lots of promises to improve the AI over time too......
I still think the AoW AI was way better then the MoM AI though, especially at higher difficulty levels. The MoM AI just cheated a lot more on harder levels.
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