Elemental: The Master List

ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Elemental: The Master List

The Latest, Greatest Pile of Player/Reviewer/Internal Feedback

Well, here it is - our list of feedback as compiled from several review sites, this forum, other forums, and our own Q/A team. There are a few more sites I need to pick apart, but in general I feel this covers many of the egregious issues (but feel free to note anything we’ve overlooked...we want to be as thorough as possible).

The ‘Major Issues’ are the ones you’ll be seeing fixed ASAP. Ideas/suggestions will be re-prioritized and completed as proper solutions are determined.

- Major List (Crashes/Stability/Etc.) -

Late game Slowdown!!!!
1. Tweaking LODs on tile designs so they fade out better
2. Any code tweaks that improve this
3. P:\Ken\Elemental Testing\Aug28\AutoSave.EleSav
  1. late auto-play game from Ken, 30k turns in
4. Slowdown between turns
5. Feedback
  1. “my only real gripe (other than the balance tweaks, and improvements to the tech tree and magic system *grins*) is with the "end game" slow.... churn....... of............. death..................... “
  2. “the game just become VERY slow. I have good computer, I do not think it should slow down like that. More over, it seems that it just hits some kind of barrier, like in 20 turns around turn 150 it converts from OK to run game, to nearly impossible to run.”
  3. “Is anyone else's games slowing down by the time they get to turn 100? This is on small maps and without fail after awhile, there's a slight delay to everything I'm doing. Unless I zoom to cloth map mode I basically have a half second lag to every command I attempt which is super annoying.”
Memory Leaks
1. On Win7-64 machines with ATI Cards...
  1. “Now that the game has bitten me, I am getting the 'out of memory' error on my very beefy new home rig. It's Win7-64 and an ATI card. This needs to be fixed.”
  2. “I started getting the 'out of memory' error after about 300 turns.This is the ATI+Win7 thing, right? ”
Alt+Tab Crashes
City Details List
1. Paul gave his dxpacks to me for this screen, so I can look at hooking it up when I’m done with the data.zip app (charles)
XML Fixes
Console App for making Data.zip
MP Specific spellbook
1. No Tactical Spells
2. Low, High level strategic counterparts to former tactical spells
MP Specific ADVENTURE trees
1. kingdom renamed “Exploration”
2. empire renamed “Exploitation”
3. add quest related techs removed and stitched up
Magic Calculations / More Exciting magic system/ Mana Regen
1. build do min-max damage, not 0-max (Bruno), DONE NO CHECKED IN.
2. feedback
  1. “The schools are not sufficiently distinct from each other. Mana regen is too slow for pure casters. The damage done by magic scales poorly against more advanced squads.”
  2. “the spells are boring beyond belief although I did like the spells that you could cast on your cities. However, the tactical spells are all the same with a few minor differences between them.”
  3. “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.”
Late game Stuck Turn-buttons
1. Some are reported to be fixed by disabling auto-explore
2. others are thought to be caused by auto-resolve battles not playing properly
3. Feedback
  1. “Finally had a gamebreaking bug actually - Dunno what happened, the game isn't locked up or anything, but if I try to advance to the next turn nothing happens, reloaded the game a few times, looks like I'll have to see what my autosaves look like.”
If the user places a building with a ‘x per city’ limit, they will be able to keep placing them if you dont click off or reselect another improvement (Anthony)
1. “When building just about anything, I find that the cursor 90% of the time will not reset, and I can build a second copy of it (doesn't matter if it's a Faction wonder, Royal wonder, whatever) in the same city.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=26)
Gold from treaties isn’t properly given to the player
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/393881
AI Improvements
1. Protecting its Sovereign / No Suicide Attacks
  1. “So I head up to his next city...it falls quickly...enemy king was inside and has been ejected on one side....he's in my territory. Attack again and he dies....War ends, much larger empire collapses...they really need to make sure the AI protects its kings if this is going to be magic bullet way to win a war you shouldn't be able to”
  2. “My current game is going well so far, although three empires fell to my sword by sending their sovereign into my territory without a strong army at their back. Silly AI.”
2. Ships?
  1. “I've heard player's mention that there's also no tactical battle yet for boats either, but this doesn't seem to be an issue since I have never, ever seen an A.I. ship -- it would make me think twice about carrying my doom stacks if I did.”
3. Using Magic More
  1. “ I hope Brad teaches it what to do with magic sometime. It ain't gonna make me gnash my teeth helplessly if it doesn't take advantage of the game mechanics...Just one spell immune bone ogre would have beaten me fair and square. Just one! My troops were so terrible even a deflected, hasted unit or two wouldn't have saved the day. They had three of the buggers!”
4. City Building
  1. “...I saw one [AI city] made up entirely of 13 houses. It's food production was completely in the negative and they had the little fish sign over it. There was no reason why it should have had that many houses and absolutely NOTHING else.”
Sound Cutting Out in Late-Game
1. “I have still sound issues and graphic issues as well. After about 2~3 hours playing, all the music completed phase out.”
2. Sound cuts out then crash (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394320)

- Minor List -

A pioneer on a boat can build a city in the water
1. “I loaded a transport with a pioneer, noticed that the pioneer could still build a settlement so I did. On water. Couldn't make any improvements, but I could make units.”
Upgrade paths for Minor cities
1. 3 levels, or the full 5 levels of upgrade options?
2. Crystal Mining Settlement
3. Ore Mining Settlement
4. Arcane Settlement
5. Technological Settlement
Teleoprt Spell Confusion/Bugs
1. Can’t use the teleport spell if the leader isn’t casting it
  1. “I cast the spell to give another leader spell casting ability.That worked, he got 6 mana. He is in my killer stack with the sovereign. I made him active and tried to cast teleport, because the whole purpose was to save all the sovereign's mana for combat that I was always using to teleport. He spent the 5 mana, but the stack didn't move.....”
2. Only your territory can be targeted, even though it says “Friendly”
  1. “...it still says 'friendly' in the description. It doesn't go to territories with non-aggression agreements, so I can't figure out what the difference is.”
Random Crashing, apparently from Caravans
1. “But I think there's a pattern now. Seems like every time a caravan gets killed and has already established a road, that the new caravan (under some bizarre bug, I assume) is so fast it gets to the trade target instantly once I dispatch it, and that somehow crashes the game.”
BASIC, SHORT, TUTORIAL
1. “There is a reasonably long learning curve involved here. However, it is far less than the curve for a "comparable" game like Civilization.”
Stacking of Items (Scott)
1. can no longer quipe INFINITE # of items - handled both in the CChampion level (see Equip Accessory) and in the UI
  1. “ There is no limit on the numbers of magical things you can equip on a hero so you can (for instance) put on scores of things that let you take more actions in combat which really distorts things.”
  2. “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)”
2. probably want to discuss the proper ‘slot’ system that we want to eventually use (2 rings, 1 pack, etc, etc) for but now this beats the ‘no limit’ system in 1.06
  1. “...no i don't need d2/wows lame equipment pane. A better UI and definitely 2 rings/1 ammy are musts, but frankly, the whole hack/slash/action genre has been using that same weak UI forever now”
Difficult to determine if a tile is a ‘Beach’ when docking a ship
1. Should have icons/some way to identify beaches on tactical map
2. “I discovered that there are places that look like beaches but which aren't considered beaches. ...seems they show up where two different types of terrain come together.”
3. “...my plan to load a pioneer on a ship and then go found a city along the coast doesn't seem to be working, [I can’t dock and unload the Pioneer] even when there is a slope available.”
Opponents Placed in order of first available Starting Position
1. The problem with is this that, in general, map makers will place starting positions in relative proximity (1, then 2 nearby, then 3 near that, etc) expanding outwards.
  1. “so for every map does the player start in the middle? it seems like im always in the middle blocking off all the countries from each other so nothing ever happens”
2. We need to COMPLETELY RANDOMIZE the starting placement of these races.
Misc
1. “I built a transport boat, had it leave the city... into a land tile. It was stuck forever.”
2. “I built a city a tile or two away from the water. I could only build stuff on the 4 squares between the city and the water, no matter how large the influence was.”
  1. This may be the “cannot place a building x tiles from another city”...perhaps not being notified properly?
3. ”The first summon that the "evil" tech tree gets (names are escaping me ATM) has a move that hits the entire field for 10 damage - it's way OP but I'm not complaining. The first couple of times I used that ability, however, the entire screen got covered in stretched-out particle-effect-looking artifacts.”

- Bugs -

Stacking with an Enemy unit instead of Attacking Them
1. “Any reason I would get an attack icon and then stack with the bandit instead of killing him like I need to?...Went away when I rebooted and reloaded....”
AI will not accept a treaty, even though they say it’s cool
1. “How do you get trade treaties to work? No matter what I do, he says the treaty is not acceptable...Istart off purposing the trade and its not balanced. I add gold until the "sounds good, I accept" button lights up. Then when I click it, he says he can not accept. I have even added over 2x the gold needed to make it acceptable. People have said they get this to work. What am I missing?”
2. “If you don't hit "ok" on the gold popup then even if you see the gold on the menu with the trade treaty it doesn't seem to apply it.” <-- I thought this was alright behavior, if you don’t click OK the deal cancels and reverts to what it was before, should it not do that? (from Sarah)
Resoln “Death Worsiping” Ability not working, or not displayed properly?
1. “ I still don't know what the death worship does for the Empire of Resoln. It says it gives a 10 HP bonus, but to who or what does it give it to.”
Twitchy Mouse
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/392527
2. “The game has odd mouse and hotkey problems and reminds me of the Disciples 3 release in that manner.”
3. “Yeah, the mouse gets all wonky and only wants to move barely one unit portrait over.” (talking about the city context ‘stationed units’ medallion list)
City Build List Listing Buildings Incorrectly?
1. “I have yet to divine why some cities are allowed to build some improvements and not others. That is especially frustrating when, for instance, I have specialized the cities by building them near map resources like lost temples, only to find out that even when they reach level 4 or 5, I cannot access the temples in those cities, but can in cities with no arcane labs even yet built!”
Unit Designs remain available from Game-Within-A-Game
1. “Another bug, I presume, is that when you start a new game you seem to still have access to some of your unit designs from the previous game(s). I could train Kingdom peasants while controlling an Empire sovereign/race. Plus I think it even showed the option for party without me having researched it, though I didn't have the resources to try if that worked.”
Build City Camera Weirdness
1. “...the camera bug is the one that happens if you have city zoom view off, where you click somewhere and it just pops your building somewhere else. I think the connecting resources to your city is by design, because if they are connected they are counted as 'part' of the city and roamer NPCs can't demolish them.”

- Ideas / Suggestions -

Random Events
1. “These are needed. World-cracking, terrain deforming, and devastating random events that make the turns more than just waiting for your troops to finish so you can send off a third army to the front, down to as mundane as...you get a new fertile tile. Random Events are a staple [in 4x], not because they are "cool,"...but because they give some rather jarring aspects to the game that players need to react to...”
2. “We definitely need random events (it's shocking that it's not in here already)! ”
Battle Improvements
1. Damage Calculations
  1. “A lot of games use 1DN rolls, they are quick, easy to implement, and WRONG.” (https://forums.elementalgame.com/392880)
2. Attack and Resistance types (blunt, piercing, fire, lighting, etc)
  1. need to be properly listed in the UI
3. AI
  1. “The tactical AI also doesn't work well and just seems to pick one target and ignore all else while beating a path to it.”
4. Formations
  1. “... the initial formation cannot be changed by the user (or perhaps I was just never smart enough to discover how)... The ability to start a battle with your archers at the rear, melee forward and hero where you need him would be a very nice improvement to the game.”
5. vs. AutoResolve
  1. “And yeah, the auto resolve sucks big time. I've actually lost archers in scenarios where only a couple of slow enemies were involved.”
6. Overall Feedback
  1. “Tactical combat is too simplistic. It needs more decisionmaking. Different damage types (and defenses against each), zones of control, attacks of opportunity, etc. Right now, it's just 'ranged guys in back, infantry up front and rumble'”
  2. “ wish there was a way to speed up animations during tactical battles. Autoresolving is not an option, since that almost always results in some unit taking damage. Clicking through battle after battle watching my longbowmen mow down enemies gets old. Is there a way to speed up animations?”
Champions
1. Leveling
  1. “I really liked how Heroes level up in games like AoW or King's Bounty. I like being able to choose new abilities to further customize them as they level up, not just adding a stat point here and there.”
2. Overall Feedback
  1. “....Champions are really, basically totally uninteresting. It costs too much gold to kit them out so that they can actually battle against anything (and even then, they will still be in huge trouble against any sort of mid/late-game monster). No decisions in upgrading, except whether to make them mages or warrior. The only point in the game when they are really useful is in the start to explore. Meh.”
  2. “This is one of the reasons why NPC warriors just aren't that useful. If you get a NPC adventurer up to level 7, no matter how well armed and armored he is, or where you've put his points on level up, he is just not going to compare well to some stack of 12 regular units with their stats all added together.” (discussing the strength of unit groups)
More Uniqueness to the Factions
1. people like varied text, saw folks comparing Procipinee’s attitude towards the fallen in comparison to Relias
  1. “I don't get the complaint that the factions aren't "memorable". They each seem to have their own quirks to me. Procipinee opens every first contact with an Empire with something equivalent to "I will f***ing end you!", and seems to be the most likely one out of the Kingdoms to go to war. Her text alone seems to infer that she's one crazy zealot toward's wiping the Empires out. Though she's as friendly as she could be toward's other Kingdoms.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=29)
2. ask for unique buildings, tech, units, spells, etc.
  1. “I'd like this more if the kingdoms weren't all so samey”
  2. “One thing that I think they should have taken from Alpha Centauri is the way that the voice overs for the various techs and wonders really fleshed out the factions. Right now it feels like the world isn't exactly generic fatasy but not really fleshed out either.”
  3. “Also, I still can't believe that every goddamn unit you can produce (that I've seen, at least) is a fucking human with a different outfit. GC2 had a bunch of different chassis' (is that the right plural form?), games like Alpha Centauri had plenty of different base templates to build from...but this seems to just have "human" to build from.”
  4. “Well... if you research the right upgrades, you can unlock the ability to create darkling and ogre and spider units and stuff? But you can't modify them. That's all I got. I do hope more crazy races are in the works.”
  5. “Some basic simple visual differences between different faction towns would just be nice. "Tarthans" I think are the most distinctive faction but their towns don't seem very "Tarthan", and neither do much of their game mechanics.”
UI Improvements
1. City Building
  1. “it is often hard to figure out why you cannot do something, such as construct a building. The lacking element does appear in red font -- but *all* the material requirements appear in a (very slightly darker) red font.”
  2. need to show the Queue and the city resources at the same time
2. Diplomacy
  1. “Is there a way to see how many turns there are left in a non-agression treaty?”
3. Unit Design
  1. “The costs/effect of various pieces of equipment are all over the map--so much so that it's actually kind of a chore to design anything, because you have to spend all sort of time trying to determine if there is a cheaper and more efficient way to build a unit with exactly the same stats. Very often, there is.”
4. Tooltips / HUD
  1. Better, more informative tooltips when rolling over resources in the top bar. List the cities producing the +X resources per turn, if applicable.
  2. HUD listing what’s being built/trained...status bar to reflect it, turns to complete
  3. Empiretree: rollovers on the little squares to display the unit/building it’s affilated with
Cheesing the System
1. Demolishing housing after leveling up
  1. “...is there any downside to destroying all your houses once you have reached city level 5? I've not done it, but since cities only need houses to level up, I don't think it would be a problem. Obviously, this would likely be considered a bug, but I'm still curious if it's possible.”
  2. “you will need something like 10 houses to get your cities up to 1250 in population (max level), but once they hit level 5 you will have capacity for 2000 pops, but since there is no point in having a high population beyond going up in levels, you might as well start demolishing all those houses to make space for some more interesting buildings”
2. more
Dynasty System
1. Numeric Kids Ages
  1. “Right now, my 25 year old sovereign has a 21 year old son. Amazing!”
  2. “I think they should just change the numerical age to a descriptor, like "child"; "youth"; "young adult" etc, if that's what they are after.”
2. Children Stats
  1. “The dynasty thing is just... weird. Had a son grow up... he had 236 mana, regenerated 8 a turn, but had 6 INT and 1 Combat Point.”
Strength of Grouping Types gets Out-Of-Control
1. “Squads get *very* powerful. I don't think a champion-centric strategy is viable after the first half of a game.”
2. “A company needs to be handled in combat calculations as 12 individuals where each individual gets some sort of bonus for being part of a larger team. Treating it as a single mega-unit is both counter-intuitive and has a nasty impact on the rest of the game.”
3. “Beyond re-designing the way mob bonuses work, combat desperately needs to separate the to-hit & to-damage mechanics. But if we're in the armchair designer corner, I have a couple of pages worth of things I'd like to see included, like rules for what units can actually target, how unit morale and army morale are handled, and many, many other things. Basically, I'd like some proper wargame mechanics instead of the "simpler & more broken than Disciples 3" mess we have now.”
4. Lots of Damage Calculation Feedback here...http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60936&page=13
Item Shop
1. UI Improvements
  1. Need to be able to see what equipment the selected guy has / change in stats with the selected shop item
  2. “Do I really have to remember what items I have equipped when I go shopping? Really?? Because I can't.”
2. Item Costs
  1. “Item costs are all over the map and need a balance pass.”
Overall Balance
1. Traits
  1. “The trait (talent?) "Organized" lets your Sov's army travel the same speed as your Sov. That is amazingly good from the start, but it gets ridiculous towards the end. Give your Sov a mount and a few magic items and, boom!, the whole army gets 7 moves. Traverses a medium map in a few turns.”
2. Archers
  1. “bows need to be nerfed....[I play with] squads of bows, long or short, and a single hero. (Add an elemental or two if you need it.) Works a little bit too well.”
  2. “People who are saying Archers are too effective must have never seen catapults. THOSE are severely overpowered. Archers, however, seem to rarely kill anything.”
3. Combat Calculations (Glass Cannons)
  1. “On first glance it looks reasonable: attacker generates damage between 1 and their attack value, defender reduces that by 1 to their defense value, and the defender takes the difference (if any) as damage. The problem is it is not unusual to get units with attack and/or defense in the 100s *but* it is almost impossible to get units (especially heroes) with that many hit points. That means if your super duper level 20 fighter with 100 attack and 100 defense runs into something like a troll the troll can kill them with one blow OR do no damage whatsoever.”
4. Resource/GH Placement
  1. “....half the time your starting location does not have ready access to a gold mine. This is such a crippling strategic drawback that when it occurs you would be better off immediately starting over”
  2. “Resource distribution seems off. There's far more materials than one will ever need, since the game puts heavy leaning on the necessity of gold. There needs to be more of a favoring for other resources to make it worthwhile for you to plant a city next to that Old Grove and get those extra materials.” (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394334)
  3. “I see posts about maps being devoid of resources, and others about there being so many its too crowded (I have had both experiences in different patch versions).”
  4. “There's definitely some weirdness with a lot of the things that spawn on the map. I had one game where my early adventuring and picking up the junk on the map led to me finding 3 sand golem flutes or whatever they're called within the first 5 turns. I pretty much just killed every civilization I encountered without issue Most of my other games though, I never find even a single one.”
  5. “And yes I'm about to start a new game and construct my cities like bananas so I can actually have cities that produce resources. I bitch out of love.”
  6. “I've gotten around this by typically building my cities in a crescent shape. Or bananatowns if you prefer. The only time I've had to include a resource has been when one of the discovery techs plopped one too close to a city, or I've accidentally linked a resource through the camera bug.”
    1. Scott Says: I’ve heard of people making these ‘banana-cities’...what does this mean, how does it help with resource gathering?
5. Starting Placement
  1. “...perhaps it was an odd coincidence but in the 8-10 times I tested it I started every game in the dead center of the map surrounded by enemies (when I had four enemies). Never once was I on the side or a corner.”
Content
1. More Items
  1. “It is almost all for melee fighters with only 2 items for archers and *nothing* for spell casters.”
  2. “Yes, the higher end hammers completely demolish anything. I'm starting to feel that the unit design system is actually leading to somewhat stale gameplay because there are no real special abilities to speak of. Every new tier of gear you get is just flat out better than the previous tier. Once I unlock lord hammers and master plate, there's no longer any decision making.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=29)
Flesh out Advisor System (Janusk Improvements)
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/394229
2. “...redefine the methods of Janusk-addition. Make the advisor a chargen choice (you could even associate a cost to it, so players could opt to not have an advisor if they so choose), and for those who opt to have one, increase his reputation considerably so that female sovereigns can't get married eons before male.”
Minor Factions / Neutral Cities
1. “On the note of Independent Factions, let's make them a little more useful, shall we? Right now they exist just to be conquered. They should have faction-specific items available....The imperative thing is that these are unique, including the faction-specific ones. Right now there's no unique flavor involved in these things, why buy from these entities when you can tech up the magic line and buy them from your own places? “ (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394334)
2. “Next to do for them, make it capable to recruit mercs from them.”
Random Loot
1. The Lorebook talks about items dropped by creatures...we need those in the game!!!!
  1. Wolf Pelt icon
  2. Skath Fin icon
  3. Drake Tooth icon
  4. Dragon Egg icon
2. TreasureDefs held and used by UnitTypes
3. Feedback
  1. “Getting gold from killing things is well and good, and the main way I fund my growing empire as well. However it would be nice if we got random drops now again.”
  2. “Something besides gold, Killed a creature that in its description that the scales from this creature were sought after to make armor... would be nice if they would drop some... even if it took 10 or so to have something made from... would be better.. .. ”
  3. “Make this true if I kill a sovereign who had hoarded night stones .. not my fault he came to raid stuff in my territory... ”
Item Forging
1. I would like to see the editor revamped as something that could work in-game for item creation, taking ingredients and making cool stuff (without having to be in the workshop).
2. Feedback
  1. “... adding a forging system would be a help, and I believe you are working on that for enchanting items and such?”
  2. “Item creation..... was looking forward to being able to enchant stuff... Sigh... ”
City Spam
1. At one time we had discussed a ‘Governing’ or ‘Administration’ ability that dictated the # of cities you could have, or total level of cities, or something...still a possibility?
2. Building Limits / Razing Options when Conquering
  1. “There must be also some kind of mechanism to prevent building so many cites. Even when you conquer new ones, you should be able to destroy city because it is too hard to maintain or something. Because maintaining 10+ cities is ugly.”
  2. “Oh, and you guys mentioned razing cities....how do I do that? I hate capturing all of these minor civ cities that can't grow past size 1.”
Summoning
1. Feedback
  1. “Summoning [should] be done in a city that have a Summoning Circle...Summoning Circle can be researched from the Magic Tech tree...Summoning Circle [should require] at least one Crystal to be 'linked' to a city (within the city area of influence)...Can only summon creatures related to a 'linked' Crystal”
Post-Victory
1. “Am I the only one who wishes you could keep playing after "winning?"”
2. “No hiscore-list or playback?!? I want to bask in my glory, dagnabbit!”
Notable Locations
1. “Elemental's system of having Notable Locations and NPC heroes materialize on the map when you research some completely abstract tech is just sort of weird and unthematic. Getting a new level in Notable Locations or Heroes is sort of like putting on the glasses from They Live. Suddenly, powerful heroes everywhere! Or, as in Tom's Figit post, skyscraper-sized haunted castles right next to your capital. And if you aren't on the leading edge of the research for these things, you end up exploring a map that is filled with cool things that you aren't allowed to interact with, which is just sort of frustrating.... If you want to walk in to an ancient ruin and take a stab at a Great Drake with a unit of spearmen, MoM is perfectly willing to let you try.”
2. “I agree with a lot of your points, but I have to disagree here. I really love the way Elemental handles the notable locations, I love that I reveal more as I delve deeper (Oooh, there's an unintentional pun) into the Adventure tree. It gives an advantage for pushing hard on that tree first at the expense of some of your others. Just a matter of preference, though, both systems certainly have their merits.”
3. More back and forth on the matter at...http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60936&page=13

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Zaroter
Natathel
_PawelS_

Quoting voidwright,

reply 169

It still bothers me that "Wisdom" at character creation becomes "Essence" in game. Also... no undead? No models for undead, at the least? C'mon... throw us necromancers a bone, already .

Particularly since wisdom still exists. It's used to determine the cost of casting spells in combat, according to the tooltip, but it can't be modified with leveling.

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I too put in my vote for conquered sovereign's remaining cities to go independent and not just magically disappear. The remaining cities should remain to be conquered or to be negotiated with, but leaving the map with a bunch of barren tiles is just not cool, aesthetic, challenging or "realistic" (for whatever that means in a fantasy game.)

Agree.

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Important suggestion that I don't see there (maybe I missed it): more special abilities. Any important and powerful unit should have like half a dozen special abilities, that's how it works in MoM and AoW and I see no downside to it.

Also flight and necromancy. Especially necromancy. And differentiation between different types of magic in general, I hate how everyone draws from essentially the same pool of spells. Other than those I think all of my complaints are on the list, and I hope they all eventually get resolved.

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How about toning down Spy that does 10 AOE damage? I think it's a game-breaker.

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1. Lag in Tactical combat, seems related to champions on horses, maybe tied in with bow's as well, but 10-15 second lag between when I first attack and when I can do anything again. Lag occures during counter attacks, and before enemy movement as well. During counter attacks, I can hover over the enemy unit, see that it lost hitpoints or even went to 0, but animations don't occur for 10-15 seconds, which really slows down combat.

Absolutely ! ! ! ! This is my number-1 issues. Have encountered many of the issues others have reported, but this one detracts most from the game (XP, sp3, 32-bit, ATI graphics)

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Quoting Lord Cobol,

reply 181

I agree, this is also my issue and it's not tied in only with bow but other weapon as well.

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I don't know if anybody else mentioned this someplace else, but the option to turn on an in-game clock would be nice.

Yes (although not exactly top priority)

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I apologize if this was already pointed out, but I don't have time to read 8 pages of posts.

Some complain that Stardock has us paying for an enormous beta. But you know what? Elemental will be super amazing in about 3-4 months and that simply could not happen without input from actual players. No matter how smart or good a dev team is, they simply don't have the manpower (or objectivity) to play their own game to the breaking point. Only real players can do that, and if they update this game like they updated GalCiv2 based upon player feedback, it will be THE turn-based strategy game of the decade, hands down.

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Quoting Thizzbaby,

reply 175

Hi guys, been really busy so didnt get to add to this list but i didnt see:

1. Allience does not work, i.e if war is declared on me my allies don't declare war on aggresor. Also A.i have never allied with other A.I, maybe because they know it doesnt work lol.

2. The randomiser does not work properley, i have checked the core files and their are a load of NPCs, quests and goodie huts that are never spawning in my games. Not sure if these are campaign only as i havn't started it yet.

Great work so far guys keep it up.

One more thing, when you win i would like a breakdown like Galciv 2. "Conquest score 87" seems very hollow. I'd like to see how many unis i killed etc, i loved metaverse on galciv.

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I would love to have the ability to look at my family tree when arranging marriages. Whether I am trying to breed the Kwisatz Haderach of channelers or just set up a dynasty with other kingdoms it would be very useful to see which of my decedents i am marrying off.

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Wow went through seven pages, thats alot of great feedback! Here's mine.

Bugs!:

Watchtowers. They do not currently add to the sight of any cites. I looked in the xml file of the watch tower and it has no command to do anything. Just all its building costs, etc. Might wana give it the command to actually affect the sight of a city. Someone fat fingered the delete key before hitting save.

Hitpoint and Mana regen in cites. Players should be able to build structures to increase these regen rates. Making large armies more viable and mana wielding champions more useful. I have been playing with the health regen as a city improvement and I think I have found how the city determines its health Regen rate, but have yet to find a way to modifiy it. Well any way the game will recognize.

Bridges for river crossings. Rivers should have strategic importance, but I should be able to build a bridge to cross them if I want to. Giving a nice possible flanking manuver for the single player game and multiplayer.

Sovreigns should be able to remarry. If my wife dies, then after a predetrimed time of mourning I should be able to remarry. If she dies without giving children then I have no chance for children after that in the current build. "I met this weaver, made great cookies, so I married her, but she wasnt giving me kids after like 25 turns, Things were cold in the palace. Then one day in the field I met this Assassin, I thought OoOoOO, Magic wielding Assassin children! FTW!... I sent the wife to ask the cave spiders for some cookie dough. She didnt come back. but I cant remarry!

A list of all the XML commands or functions and what they do for the modders. Like how is <Provides> different than <Modtype> with an <Attribute> and a <Value>. Some things could be a little clearer in how they affect the overall funtion of the game.

Keep up the good work and thanks for taking the time to listen to us.

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When can we expect a patch fixing the Major issues listed?

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Big respect and thumbs up to the devs and everyone providing feedback to make the game as good as it possibly can be!

I look forward to start playing it once again when all the major fixes and improvements have been implemented.

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I would like to see the NPC that you can hire, join your cities permanently. That way, if a merchant gives you +1 gildar, you could add that to the city production. This would make the buildings that increase a cities output more valuable. I'm having the problems that I have 6 cites, but only 3 of them I actually use the improvement buildings, cause they are the only cities with resources beyond materials, or iron. But I have 10 champions that do nothing but sit in my cities. I have only seen two NPC, produciton boost, and food boost, that are city specific. I would be happier with more city boosting NPCs, than having my NPC just add to my kingdom production, because I can't use my cities improvements to add to them.

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How about something for the Tactical Combat delay with Archers, especially if you equip a bow on your Sov. I love using archers, but I'm very tired of waiting for the miss text to travel on up (especially in the case of the Sov which could be 5-10 seconds due to lag).

Can we speed that up ourselves, or can this be a fix for the greater good?

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Please add to the list:

Need a way to view a tile when a unit is on top of it. As far as I can tell in you have a unit ontop of a resource, you can't view what that resource is. nor can you click on it to build on it

nice stuff:

It would also be nice to have an army management screen so I can locate all my forces, whether they be in a city or on the field.

A tech tree would be nice so you could figure out where you wanted to go without clicking down a bunch in the hiergamenon

Better city management screen/ui. I still haven't found where it shows the free space left to built number.

Keep up the good work!

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Quoting dyer136,

reply 190

This

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How about city "palace" box to store all your unneeded item? (in case you dont want to sell them)

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Notable Locations

“Elemental's system of having Notable Locations and NPC heroes materialize on the map when you research some completely abstract tech is just sort of weird and unthematic. Getting a new level in Notable Locations or Heroes is sort of like putting on the glasses from They Live. Suddenly, powerful heroes everywhere! Or, as in Tom's Figit post, skyscraper-sized haunted castles right next to your capital. And if you aren't on the leading edge of the research for these things, you end up exploring a map that is filled with cool things that you aren't allowed to interact with, which is just sort of frustrating.... If you want to walk in to an ancient ruin and take a stab at a Great Drake with a unit of spearmen, MoM is perfectly willing to let you try.”

SO happy to see this listed.

That mechanic needs to be eradicated.

Actually, many technologies in Elemental seem to suffer from the same "just grab me to unlock a mechanic" thing. I'm probably asking too much at this point but the tree should be less linear and more flavour-oriented... remember Alpha Centauri, where technologies had prerequisites even from different fields?

That felt like a REAL technology tree, and it really added to the depth of the game. Having technologies to "unlock" lairs on the other hand... ugh.

Sorry but that was just a very wrong design choice.

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Thank you! Nice list!

If I could add ONLY ONE thing of most things not on this list that I think we need most, it would be changes to terrain / the playfield.

The Map, Terrain, and Movement. In GC2, one main shortcoming was the uniform map, due mostly to its space theme setting -- there were no terrain variations which yielded strategic choices (e.g. chokepoints e.g. pathing decisions). I feel that Elemental is not much better. In most other games of this genre, attention to the map and its features is key, for many reasons; in Elemental, one need mostly look at the "glowing bits", and treat the rest as a relatively uniform, if cosmetically varied, surface. Why? Two factors. Factor one: Terrain features (grassland, forest, swamp, hills, etc.) do not appear to play a significant factor in modifying a unit's movement, nor do they play a significant factor in any other aspect of the game except for defensive bonuses (whose exact workings are unclear). Factor two: Most units in Elemental move at a uniform speed, and most apparently do not have flags for being affected by terrain. This is different in most other land-based strategy games, and for good reason: they give the player options in making interesting strategic choices. Because Elemental lacks these in this context, it becomes, in my opinion, that much more lackluster.

In games like Civilization or Dominions, it matters a lot which terrain tiles (e.g. jungle or swamp, grasslands or hills, etc.) are in your zone of control; in Elemental, it doesn't seem to matter at all. In fact, the only real use for zone of control that I can see is that it lets you own shards. Thus Elemental's map is very much like GC2's: a wide open, uniform field, whose sole characteristics were "resources" (shards). As I tried to describe in my post from August 2006, this detracts from the game's strategic elements and makes it less fun.

Suggestions:

(1) Make terrain (and not merely terrain enhancements, such as fertile land) matter to economy, city building, questing, neutral spawning, and the chance of yielding special events, e.g. hills will have a greater chance of harboring metals but will rarely yield food. This might require reworking the resources system (e.g. making resource requirements and units of measurement larger and more dispersed). By that I mean it might make it easier to count if "food" increments were increased by 10, so that for example a hut required 10 food, and so on; I would suggest making farms provide 20 food (or 2 food in the current system) and letting grassland tiles provide 0.25 food (or less in the old system), forest tiles provide 0.25 materials, hills provide 0.25 metal, and swamps provide a slight chance of something interesting to spawn. One could also imagine that with the correct technological advancements (e.g. in civilization or adventuring), one could glean additional boni, e.g. with hills, there might be a chance of finding "caves" if Adventure Level X is unlocked, etc., while plain grassland should yield an additional slight food bonus...

(2) Give movement bonuses (for certain units) on certain terrain types and penalties on others. This should apply predominately to the strategic map, but also to the tactical map. On the tactical map, terrain should also affect LOS for ranged attacks and fog of war. Age of Wonders did ok with this many years ago.

(3) Make terrain interactable not only with units and the economy, but with spells, for example summons (Treant only on forests), buffing (Camoflauge only in hills), damage (Avalanche only in mountains, Quicksand only in swamps), or in general (buff on a champion lasts X turns, gives all units under that champion's control +1 to attack for each point of charisma that champion has over 9, but +2 points per Charisma over 9 in forests), etc.

Thank you

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Wow. Much more bugs than i found. Hope to see fixes in the next patch

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I actually read through all the replies because I was curious to see other responses before posting my own.

First, I want to thank BB and Brad for both their efforts on what will become an amazing game and second for their communication. It's one thing to "patch" their baby, it's something else entirely to talk with players and allow us to become a part of the process.

Too many people are asking foolish questions like "when?" - I'm hoping most of these are because they have not read the other posts. Brad is on vacation. The other devs took the weekend off. They MORE then earned it with all the extra work they did during release week (both because of the street date breach and because of the hotfixes). I'm beyond amazed that this large of a post was compiled so quickly, and so thoroughly with links! That being said, stop rushing the devs! There's a lot to code, and that's after the team agrees on what's best for the game and players.

Someone above already said this above, and I'm new to these types of forums, so I can't do the fancy quotes, but the biggest thing I saw was "

MP Specific spellbook
1. No Tactical Spells
2. Low, High level strategic counterparts to former tactical spells

for the love of all that is magical, NO! The time we spend learning the tech trees and ESPECIALLY the magic system in a game with MAGIC in the title, in the campaign and sandbox modes, teaches us how to play to our strengths and weaknesses. Having to learn a completely separate system for MP would be daunting at best, tedious at worst. Especially for those of us who plan to go back to our single player games when our co-gamers are unavailable. Trying to swap back and forth would cause massive headaches and ruin an awesome game.

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Ive noticed every time I reload a game new element shards spawn on the map. In one game i had roughly 7 of each element shard in my control alone.

Also im ocasionaly having trouble with caravans that when killed wont become available again to retrain, effectivly preventing me from leveling up roads and getting a food bonus.

Also on the not of caravans. I'd like to be abe to designate the path the road will take, so I can avoid it going through a monster spawning forrest or have it go though a mountain pass.

Anouther idea would be if caravans could use harbours to go between cities seperated by water.

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Quoting Hybridvitae,

reply 198

Too many people are asking foolish questions like "when?"

What does Brad being away have to do with the majority of non-AI related major issues? Stardock employees aren't just sitting around working on a patch with no idea of when it will be ready to be released.

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I AM SO DAMN SICK OF LITA

Of all my complaints, this might be the most minor, but also the easiest to fix. Add more hero names to the database please.

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