Congratulations on getting here guys!  I am really looking forward to seeing what you have coming for us in future updates.  In the meanting, get some rest and may the fruits of your efforts exceed your wildest expectations.

Congratulations on soon-release.

Please try to have a fix for ati+win7 64bit crashes in the day0 patch! It's really killing the fun.

So at what difficulty level does the creatures (Neutral or Independants) of the world start attacking the players (AI and Human) to include attacking cities? I noticed on normal they just stand there waiting to be slautered.

In AOW:SM I created many maps where the Independats were so dangerous that the players AI and Human would have to band togather just to stay alive. Those were some fun maps. (Both SP and MP.) I'm hoping that I can have the independats do the same in Elemental.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but I did find an issue with casting spells on heros. For example I did the Imbue Essence on a stack that had 3 heros in it but the spell did not ask who I wanted to cast this on. I also tried it with the Protect person (or something like that) spell and it also would not ask who I wanted targeted it just randomly picked one. Please do make us have to break up a stack just to be able to target an individual. I looked in the online help area and the .pdf manual but found no help with this.

Please, concentrate on bugs and balance. I now know why you call your early alphas "betas": because you can call your "betas" "releases"... Waiting for the game to be stable and balanced before to release, even if it means a later release would certainly have been better. This may have been a cause for bank account problems, but you wouldn't have had such exhaustion problem! And possibly, I would have avoided all that frustration.

I'm glad I waited the night to cool down before posting, my previous version was a lot more heated!

Here is my share of bug reports

• diamondspider forgot to speak about the biggest of all bugs : if switch to main menu from a game that lasted more than ten minutes and I get a crash... If I use the map editor, it's even quicker. (edit: sorry for this strange empty link, a bug of the forum editor)
• The cursor go crazy pretty often; clicking on small buttons with a speech forbidden cursor is very disturbing.
• I once got to hire a clone of one of my heroes, with just the name changing, and every thing else, from profession and stats to clothes and tattoos, the same.
• Then I ask a unit to move, it often will move to another place. In tactical battle, this is very annoying, when you ask someone to attack and that he starts to move around its target... When the cursor decides to be crazy at the same time, it's quite a cause of anxiety. It often happen when you are in mountainous regions or when you click on an enemy.

And the balance is really, really bad. You should restart it all over...

• Heroes are useless, because underpowered, unless you equip them with really good stuff. Did you think to give two or even three stats points to dispatch on level up ?
• Groups of units (several people on a tactical battle tile) are ridiculously overpowered. If it was me, this would disappear from the game right away : the very concept of multiplying the attack and armor by multiplying the people is ludicrous. It's OK to multiply the hp (if the little people change accordingly when it is lowered). It's the number of hit and not the attack rating that should be multiplied, when a hit is ordered (according to the number of people still alive). When an attacking unit is equipped with a sword or bow, the maximum damage should be to kill one of the people of the unit, unless using area of effect attack, attacks from a big creature (like a dragon's paw), or another group, as they would get several attacks, and not a single big one. And to finish it, once you get the tech, you should have made possible to regroup people in units, and to split them, while keeping track of each people's experience, and stats. Of course, every character in the group should be equiped with exactly the same gear.
• It seems it is not possible to upgrade a non-hero unit's equipment. I would have made it possible when the unit is in a town.
• How comes equipment for heroes is so expensive? for the price of a hero's club, you could equip ten peasants with clubs... And train them in the process. Are sales reserved for peasants or what ? This is one of the things that makes heroes so useless. It is so true that, you can sometime resell heroes gear for more than the price you hired them right after they join your empire. It should be possible to craft high quality stuff for the heroes, too expensive to use for troops, but that comes with better stats. And that would take time and resources to craft. The gear price for peasants should even be more than the ones for the heroes, as heroes don't need to be trained to use them. And basic gear, like a club, should cost a lot less than a merchant's shop to build, for example. Weapons should begin to be expansive only when they start to be of high quality. You may argue that the merchant pays a part of the price, but then , what about the other buildings?
• Why is it not possible to pick up the vanquished enemy equipment, with perhaps some loss from the hits they received? And enable to use them to upgrade your own troops (after a training course in town if necessary, depending of the weapon type), especially when you have the technology required to build them? If you're afraid for mass selling, you can easily forbid to sell more than a couple of the same equipment at a time, depending on the city size you try to sell; and consistent prices for heroes and troops would help to avoid transforming a victory into a massive cash income. Limiting the inventory space would do that just fine, too; you could make the battlefield into a special location, with the amount of gear disappearing in the course of time, or when a bandit come over to take it.

Some designs are also very anoying, and need to be changed.

• A simple one: why can't I edit an existing sovereign when I'm starting a new game?..
• Why is the equipment of the heroes not directly visible in the merchant's screen ? If it is only to be able to show his ugly face, I'd rather not see it at all and be able to know what I need to buy. I remember you speak about how much you hated to have so much clicks to do in some old beta version. Don't give it up now!
• Why are tactical battle animations so slow? using archers on the battlefield is a pain. They transformed the already boring campaign in a nightmare (I did not research the bow in any of my sandbox starts).
• The trade screen is really the worst piece of ergonomy I've seen for years... You should remake it from scrash, and explain the trainee that made it how bad his job was...

I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some of the ideas that came to my mind in the course of my games.

It's pretty easy to patch once the update comes out, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Excellent suggestions Edrin. I especially agree with the above points.

From the limited time I've spent with the game, I agree with this.  Damage ranges need to be more predictable for sure. 

It would also be nice if the game showed a damage estimate before you commit to an attack, taking enemy defense bonuses into consideration (it might already be doing this and I just missed it).

Congratulations on release day! (although a lot of work remains to get the game into the shape we want it).

Two important points (of view) on the tactical combat: 1. like many have said, please lower the spread of damage possible, it is just too random, which sooner or later becomes seriously annoying when bad luck messes up your master plan.

2. I find the retaliatory attacks to be slightly annoying as implemented also. I know this is not a bug, but I think the game would be much more fun to play if the retaliatory attacks where either only available as special ability (e.g. through training, and for certain monsters) or if they did considerable less damage in general. As it stands now, often you take more damage when attacking than you deliver - not fun IMPOV. It makes you wish you could just press skip turn button for all your peasants and bad soldiers. Let the attacks be the moment you deal out some damage (and maybe taking some, lesser), for both sides. As it is now, ranged weapons and magic becomes overpowered too. It's not really firstly about balance, just about the feeling of having to kill off your own troops by your own mouse clicking ...    

Agreed!  Please give us all the SP features, and let them be just as customizable (we can choose to use questing as a way to win in SP, let us be able to turn that off in competitive if we want, and leave it in for cooperative play).  Also, any chance we can get hotseat play?  I play similar games with family, but they hate taking the controls usually - instead they 'direct' me what they want done as they understand the game just fine (Civ, Warlords, etc.).

Had a chance to play the game last night briefly, and while I had a few issues, simply reading problems others had made it all a bit smoother.  Game was stable enough, but there were some noticeable bugs (for example, clicking on a city in the unit tree would show one name, zoom to a city with a different name, and then if I zoomed out to cloth map would show a different name too!)

Thanks for a fun game - can't wait to try out the patch, and (soon) try MP!

You can do a digital download....

What exactly stops you from buying it digitally on Impulse?

That's what I did.