I am a little disappointed with Elemental.  Especially, the balance of the game is really bad. I am setting the AI difficulty to Ridiculous, yet it is ridiculously easy to beat them. Even in tactical battle, AI always comes straight toward my units, never trying to lure in or take any advantage points in the tac map. My hero units can wear infinite numbers of amulets, rings, and other packs... In time, my one hero unit wiped out everything in the map. (the hero wears 100s of amulets and 100s or rings)

I posted several suggestions on equipment UI and equipment slot & bag system. However, you guys did not listen or even thought about the equipment system.  It should be at least 'World of Warcraft' or 'Diablo II' to limit the number of equipment you can wear so that it will give some reality, stratigic thoughts, and balance in the game.

Soverign items should be at least twice powerful to the same class of normal item if you apply my suggestion. Otherwise, heroes are useless.

Mana regeneration 1 mana / turn makes tactical magic system pretty much useless later in the game.  Most of my battles are might focused because of mana regeneration limits.  I expect to use at least one tac magic per battle, yet the current mana regeneration system makes it impossible. I believe I was able to use tac magic effectively in about 1 battle out of 90 battle fought due to this limit.

Magic defense (resistance) is not clearly shown or explained anywhere. In one case, one of my hero (intel 35, essen 41, Hit 18) died with flame touch casted by enemy (intel 15, essen 18). It seems to me intel is the only parameter related to magic defense. And this result should not be happening. The amount of time spent increase intel to 35 is huge, yet the guy died by intel 15... What's the point here ? balance, balance !!!!!!  

The ability of death worship is not working at all. Well, several building bonus and hero bonus are not working as well (some works and some don't work). I don't see any faction advantages and disadvantages working in the game.

I have still sound issues and graphic issues as well. After about 2~3 hours playing, all the music completed phase out. I have to exit out of game and re-run to correct it. Some city improvements are sometimes not displayed in the map. I normally get fixed if I exit out and re-run the game again. 

I know how hard you guys have worked, and the Elemental become improved a lot in the BETA process. However, you guys released the game even though many of users concerned about the final quality of the game due to your tight schedules.

Anyway, more smart AI coding & game balancing is urgently needed. I can only score 3 out of 10 for current Elemental, which is... not good...

Excluding the thumb 8 rings can be seen on a hand, but I'm leaning towards a max limit of 4 rings per champion thus the rings are not touching each other.  This allows for more combinations in the game and is more logical.  I'm sure more monster levels are planned as well.

Also perhaps some of the Empire races can have different formed hands thus having a limit of only 2 or 3 rings.

I've finally noted a correlation between zooming and crashes on my machine, which, having read this portion of your post, leads me to believe that the crashes are connected to the issue you mention above.  If I pick a zoom level and stay there, I can play for hours without a crash, but if I try to zoom to a different level, the game will crash--with the "DX error: Invalid call" message.

So, here's hoping your efforts to address this will finally end my problems.

You guys going to release a quick fix for that building glitch? That alone should significantly increase game performance.

That's great news, BoogieBac.

Thanx for the info. This definitely restores my faith in the project and puts me back in the "supporters" group

I agree with Mistwraithe. Especially Mana Regaining should be linked with a basic skill, maybe (Int + Ess)/20 or something. Or it might depend on the number of shards you control. Or a combination of some things, there could even be buildings supporting that. In any event, having effectively ONE point of Mana per turn isn't exactly doing the name of the game justice - after all it's called War of Magic.

Hello,

   First of all Its a wonderful game brought me back to my  younger days.  My machine is  a bit struggling to run the game buts its all good.  I really appreciate the efforts you guys put in the updates.  Its my first time to buy a stardock game and it will not be my last.  Great game, Great effort 2 out of 3 is not bad  

Heh, I'd just like normalized damage ratings.

I think you could do this with Attack vs Defense AND Damage vs Resistance

that way, you can have crazy attack scores and normalized damage, or low attack scores and normalized damage.

basically, damage can be something sane like  5-10, while you can still have an "attack" score of 0-20.

also, some "or most" people could have a resistance score. Like, most people could have 0-2 resistance, and true bad-asses might have 0-5 resistance (or more)

I dunno, I just think battles would make more sense if these things happened.

So basically, Random Attack scores (as is), Random Defense scores (as is) ... Normalized/logical damage scores (new) ... and some people having a low/random resistance to mitigate damage (new)

And (here's the best part) spells could just be Damage vs Resistance.

I mean, I don't mind spells doing jack shit if its on the strategy map, but if im risking my neck on the Tactical map, they better be stronger (basically, spells as they are now might as well have 5 range and castable on the strategy map ... and just be stronger/more reliable on the tactical)

In the pipeline in defiance of what?  Are there naysayers in the building? 

Such a nice engine you have, Stardock guys, here are some thoughts on making magic system more interesting (and sorry for my bad english .

+1 for MoM-style spellbooks: amount of spells in each School should depend on number of spellbooks picked in the beginning, magic schools should be pure elemental (say, Destruction = Fire, Alteration = Earth) or elements combination (Water + Air = Illusion). Moreover, making each spellbook to contain less spells (randomly defined at the game beginning, higher level spells are less likely than lesser ones) and giving it a distinct name (random names, as for cities&heirs) would allow to trade spellbooks like resources and champions or obtain them in quests. This way spellbooks will be much like Magic the Gathering booster packs . Again, looking at MtG side: it would be nice to see some counterspells.

Also, +1 for summoning circle (but allow summoning of lesser creatures in the field). Two other kinds of magical buildings seem very promising to me: magical towers (mana accumulators) and magical forges. First one (name it a 'Crystal Sphere' - perhaps, should be limited to 1 per faction) accumulates mana up to certain amount, so each channeler firstly depletes his own mana pool, and then takes mana from the Sphere. A channeler defending the city where Sphere is built will have almost unlimited mana (which makes such cities extremely hard to siege) - but this is ok as long as we can cut off nearly all his resources. Magical forge is the building which should allow magical items design. Yes, they should be designed (as the units), and not become available via Tech Tree advances. Maybe, Magic Tech level should limit amount of magical power and/or School alignment for these items.

Another idea about magic system seems very interesing, but less realistic (in terms of game balance): shards spell bonus should be not only number-based, but also distance-based. E.g., sorcerer casting a fireball in the tile adjacent to a Fire Shard could not only instantly burn to ashes entire army, but also himself due to intensity of Fire elemental powers near the Shard. This can be done via defining several zones of Shards power intensity, the maximum is 1-2 tiles surrounding the shard, the mininum intensity is 20 tiles and more (zone ranges are map size-based). This would force sorcerers to think twice when selecting a place for The Final Battle .

The idea on being unable to build troops wearing metal armor in cities without linked mines could add some depth to game strategies, but it contradicts with 2 things: caravans and global resource pool. I'll try to be more clear: caravans link the kingdom/empire with a net of roads, so the city without metal mine theoretically can receive metal by caravan. AFAIR, this approach was used in Civ III (don't know about Civ IV, haven't play): if we have an Oil resource, we can build tanks, for example, in each city that is connected via road or railroad to the city near this Oil. But here, in Elemental, we have a global resource pool, which doesn't work together with resource availability via roads. Still there is a solution: introduce a Warehouse building (yeah, let's add some logistics from economic simulators into a fantasy game . So, resources gathered near city go directly to its warehouses, then, we can create caravans (1 caravan per city limit is too hard), each will carry fixed amount of resources from one fixed town to another. Quantity of resource being transported each turn is based on a distance between cities and the caravan size (which also could be 1, 4, etc...). This way all existing caravans should be placed on their own screen, and should NOT respond to Tab cycling .

I consider first suggestion as almost necessary, others are interesting, but also very discussable.

Hopefully, before Civ V comes out. So far, I've had some fun but tons of grief with Elemental, and I have trouble seeing me come back to it once Uncle Sid delivers the goods.

Honestly I am not interested in CIV, kinda bored of the historical game. I'm sticking out with this game for the long haul, but at the moment am having difficulties enjoying it due to the performance problems. I hope they push out a fix for this soon.

Yes, this makes magic very unfun.  Give us more control over the mana regen rate through stats, buildings and/or level ups.  So far the only thing I found that effects it is a building that needs to be built in a level 5 city I believe.  That's just to long of a time with having only +1 mana regeneration.