http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_in_a_world_of_dragon.php <- game was rushed based on this review.

Although review is apparently confused in the ways of math: 5 * 1.25 * 1.5 = 9.37 rounded up = 9.4

He is not confused with math, he is applying the multiplier to the base amount not the new total.

You and Stardock:

5 * 1.25= 6.25

6.25 * 1.5 = 9.37 or 9.4

Reviewer:

5 * .25 = 1.25

5 * .50 = 2.5

5 + 1.25 + 2.5 = 8.75 or 8.8

Neither one is mathematically incorrect, and both assumptions could work, and I think i have seen in strategy games in the past.

it was not : 9.4 * 88% = 8.272

9,4 + 8.27 = 17, 67

The biggest thing he could find and talk about in length was a maths problem?

Okay....

It was a pretty dull review.

I believe Tom over on Fidgit is going to do a Game Diary on Elemental, so he will post a few days worth of commentary on his experience (hopefully after the 0 day patch for sure!), he did a game diary when he reviewed Red Dead Redemption awhile back ,that I really liked. 

Also he also almost never posts a score (number nor letter), just his over all opinion, so I will keep him out of the main topic thread, unless he chooses to post a score.

I was focusing on the big boys, IGN, Gamespot, Eurogamer, Giantbomb, Rock Paper Shotgun, Joystiq , Destructoid,  when I made this topic.

It wasn't actually a review was it? I don't know how they define their 'game diaries', but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a serious review. And I think he'll be doing more diaries of Elemental, so he might give a better impression in the next diary. The maths might seem to be an odd thing to focus on, but I think it makes sense in a game like this. After all, if the maths feels off (even if it actually isn't) it does make the game less fun to play.

Also, I'm pretty sure the '+25%' thing would confuse me. Wouldn't it be more intuitive to actually have it say '*25%' instead of +? I don't know how it's done properly, but to someone without any advanced maths knowledge, I would assume that you add percentages together in something like this.

I don't think that this thread was de-railed. You talked about game reviews, and here is one. I think the review is premature and a little oddly focused, but there it is. 

Yes. When you say +25%, you mean this:

Y = X + X*0.25

That is, take 25% of X and add it. If you get another 25% bonus, you do exactly the same thing and the two bonuses give you the same amount. (Or if you get five of them, the fifth one is adding the same amount as the first one still.)  Five of them looks roughly like this:

Y = X + X*0.25+ X*0.25+ X*0.25+ X*0.25+ X*0.25 = X + X*1.25

If X = 100, each 25% bonus adds 25. With five of them you wind up with Y = 225, which is 100 + 125% of 100. Every 25% bonus adds 25, no matter how many of them you get.

What Elemental is doing is this for the first bonus:

Y = X * 1.25

With one bonus it doesn't matter, but as you add more the value goes up. Five of them gives you this:

Y = X* 1.25* 1.25* 1.25* 1.25* 1.25

Starting with the same value of 100, in this case you'll wind up with 305. The first bonus is still worth 25, but the second one is worth 31, the third is worth 39, fourth is 49, and fifth is 61. What'll happen as you pile up more bonuses (and especially some larger ones) is the numbers will start scaling incredibly quickly.

Sufficied to say there's no adding going on there and the UI saying +25% isn't telling you what it's actually doing.

I disagree. You are adding a percentage of a total, and that makes the total change all the time. If you didn't, working with percentages and low numbers like this, would make no sense. To me, the +25% is acting exactly how I would be expecting it to; it is increasing the previous total by 25% - and not by 25% of some old total.

Tom Chick is a terrific reviewer and a big fan of strategy games.  Not that he's the Word of God or anything, but as far as game reviewers get, he's about the best you can hope for.  There's no reason to slam him for discussing his frustrations while, as he puts it, trying to like the game.  Tom Chick and Brad are no strangers to each other, it's not as if Tom's out to do a hatchet job.

Also, this isn't a review.  This was his first early snippet of his thoughts with the game.  And you can't just say "Pff, a math problem!".  If a gun in a FPS is supposed to do 5.0 damage a shot, but instead does 50.0 damage a shot because of a misplaced decimal, it's a "math problem" but it's pretty significant in terms of gameplay!  It's even more critical for strategy games.  If numbers aren't being calculated like they should for research, production, income (NOTE: I'm NOT saying that's the case, just that's what Tom's thinking was), that's a pretty damn significant issue in a TBS.

To clarify the 'percentage' debate a bit further, this is what Elemental (as well as every RPG on the planet) is doing. Say,for instance, you have two +25% bonuses and one +30% stacking up, and let X be the base value:

S = X + (X * 0.25)

S = S + (S * 0.25)

S = S + (S * 0.30)

And then it uses S as the final value. Easy to compute, logical, and consistent with the Mathematic definition of percentage, win for all involved. And before you ask, no, the final result wouldn't change if you moved the 30% calculation to the middle or first line, nor if one (or more) of the percentages is negative either.