Money has been tight lately, as most of you can probably understand in our current economic climate. Having always been a TBS fan, I had to make a decision as to which game I would buy this fall. I've been anticipating Civilization 5 and Elemental for quite some time, but I had to go with the latter, and I still don't regret it.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting pretty tired of the Civilization series. It's starting to remind me of Madden: Release the same game, add a few features, and call it the best thing since sliced bread. I've played every one of them, and every spin off since Civ 1 and the whole tour through history bit is getting a bit long in the tooth for me.
So I'm left with Elemental, which kind of feels like the old pick-up truck your dad gave you. It doesn't exactly run all that great, needs a new set of...well, everything, and doesn't impress your friends all that much. So would I rather take the old pick-up truck that can potentially take me to places I've never been before, or do I stick with Civilization, my shiny ten-speed that's always been safe and reliable my whole life?
I've read all the reviews, seen all the crap hit the fan, and even felt a bit of disappointment in the past few weeks. However, there's something about this game that just gets me excited, something unique, and something I don't feel very often with games. Even with all of the bugs and problems this game has, it has something special that I can't quite explain. With Stardock's commitment to improve things, I am giddy with anticipation as to where we will be led in the next few months and years. It's expecting the unexpected with Elemental that is holding my interest. It's hoping that perhaps one day Elemental will defy it's launch in a way that we have never seen before.
I'm sure that Civilization 5 will get reviewed really well, I'm sure it will be everything that everyone has hoped it would be. I'm sure it will be polished, stable, and relatively bug-free. I'm sure, at the core of it all, it will still feel like the Civilization we've grown to love. Unfortunately, this is where I become bored. I'll take the old pickup-truck, but I'm not sure why.
Perhaps Trinity had the answer: Because you have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.
While I can see the hex grid (no more stacks of doom), new combat mechanics and the other tweaks giving some life to the Civ franchise, I still don't see the underlying experience changing at all. It's still all too familiar for me. For example, I'm pretty sure we're going to, once again, see Granaries, Phalanxes, Carriers, Artillery, Philosphy, Monarchy, Temples and all the rest of the BS that I've seen in the game for years and years. After all, you can't really change the content of a game based on real-world history.
Elemental just has so many new features that Civ doesn't, even if the core game-play is still lacking. In fact, I don't really see Civ 5 doing anything at all that Elemental doesn't already do. In addition to all the 4x staples, Elemental has separate kingdom and empire trees, a magic tree, real tactical combat, integrated modding (where I don't have to search the web for mods), quests, unit customization, a customizable sovereign character, marriage, wives, children, dynasties, spacial cities, and role-playing.
Beyond that, Elemental just feels like a completely different experience to me than any Civ game I've ever played. I don't have to play Elemental and try to understand why Alexander the Great has Nuclear Weapons. I don't have to try to rationalize why I'm playing real-world history on some random-seeded map any more. Every experience makes sense in Elemental, because it's fantasy, and it's an experience and a story that I had a hand in making up myself based on a world that doesn't really exist. I can't mod in Goblins and expect it to make sense with my dragoons, but I can throw in anything my imagination can come up with in Elemental and it will still make sense in any game.
I won't argue that Civ 5 isn't going to be great, but I disagree that this isn't just the same Civilization packaged with a few notable changes. It's still 4X world history that has to adhere to certain rules and boundaries. It is a road that will dead-end at some point, while Elemental will not.
I am so tired of people complaining about the stack of doom. I have been hearing this debate for what seems like 10 years and have come to one conclusion, SD has gotten it right with fleets/parties. It shows they have learned a lesson from all the great 4x games of old. In MOO2 (the greatest 4x game imho), two fleets fought with a combination of arms, whereas in the Civ series, stacks fight one unit at a time with real cap on number of attacks/defense moves per turn (apparently a tank can in fact defend against 80 other tanks at the same time) and only the limited secondary of catapults. Now in civ 5, they have decided you know what, one unit per hex and the whole game becomes basically a giant tactical battle. I will be very upset when even the smallest war effort in civ5 takes hours and hours just to move each and every unit around. What is the trade off here? Instead of moving one big stack of doom towards your cities, I now line up 100 tanks cost to cost and roll them like an unstoppable wave towards your civ?
1UPT and the hex grid force you to play more strategically. This way, the devs have made it so that each battle is more tactical with less units.
John Shafer said in a recent interview that a large army in Civ V would be around 30 units, whereas it used to be 100+ units in Civ 4. They aren't going to make you manage an insane amount of units because you don't need to anymore.
And yet I heard this game was more focused on combat than the games were previously. I am not sure what that means exactly, but a 1000 turns of war after war is not really what I want to see in the game.
Yep, well that's the concern most people have in the Civfanatics forum.
Hopefully it isn't the case, the previews so far haven't indicated this. They just say combat is more fun and involved, but not that it undermines the other aspects of the game.
Well it's really the fact that units just fight 1 at a time that makes the stack of doom so annoying. No matter what unit you attack with, it will always be countered with the best possible defender (though with the attrition system it's not really true that one tank can defend against 80 like you describe). This makes any kind of offensive gains incredibly slow and tedious unless you out number your enemy by a vast margin. You complain about lining up your tanks taking forever, and maybe it will and maybe it won't. But war efforts already take forever in the current game because of all the perfect defence units you can stack with terrain bonuses in a single space, and at least in CiV 5 I anticipate that once you punch through and wipe out the enemy lines you will win much more decisively, rather then the endless city to city stack of doom vs stack of doom slog.
If anyone's ever played Civ1 they might remember that unless you were in a city whenever one unit was destroyed, every single other unit in that space was destroyed too. That encouraged you to spread out more and put a certain diminishing returns on the number of units that were helpfull on offence. Wars certainly went a lot faster and there were no hours of setup.
Yeah you're right Istari. Sid is a hack who bluffed his way to the top releasing shoddy, busted shite for decades. FWIW my EWOM $ was refunded, so no, I no longer have that waste of hard drive space occupying my SSD.
Did Stardock ever fire up the MP servers yet? Game has been out for weeks now ...
Partially correct. I did log 100 hours on .05 and .06, but it wasn't boredom RPG Watch is the forum rune speaks of if you don't read enough fanboy garbage here.
Green Bay
I'm going to get Civ V even though it has that damn Steam crap associated with it. I see no advantages for single players with Steam but I have had Civ since day one and I'll get this one just because I can't imagine not having it. But I hope the moddability is good or better than Civ 4. I loved the mods for that game and some of them inspired me to get Elemental.
Hmm, how many ppl were there on release of Civ 4? When it came out it was criticized by every man and his dog. It had planty of technical problems and big shipment screw up.
I will buy both of them, they way to different to compare!
I am NOT commenting on these here fine forums regarding any Elemental 1.07+ thread, because I have not played it (as you noted stalker, I was refunded).
However, *THIS* thread is also discussing the prospects of CIV 5 of which my thoughts on this up and coming game are as valid as anyone's.
I will eventually have both. Right now I got neither. Sort of saw the release problems with Elemental coming.
With Civ 5 I will play the Demo and read a lot of tech support posts and such. Pays to look before you leap.
Let me brighten this dud of a post by providing a link to the IGN video preview of Civ 5 for those who have not seen it. I've played Civ since Civ 1 way back yon, and sure this is the same game with a new coat of paint and some great new features. Can't wait to try out the new combat! But then comes the delight of paying for the glorious expansions and probably get into some of the modding.
Elemental will also get up to speed along the way, so there is that to look forward to as well.
About six months down the line I think Victoria 2 is going to be worth a spin as well. Played Demo, liked it, but the the full game is going to take a good while and a few patches to bring it up to speed.
Which brings us to choosing one over the other? I choose things because I like them. No reason at all. I am completely at the whim of dark and unknown lusts dwelling deep in the pig sty of my subconscious over which I have no control.
Nice partial quote .. live in DC?
I did not mis-quote, quote out of context, nor did I segment your quote in order to better allow myself to address a particular point you made. You made a statement, I quoted it and made the necessary amendments to it to allow it to read correctly and used the correct methods for doing so to ensure anyone reading would understand that I have done this.
It's a strategy game, not a tactical game. The battles themselves are purely mathematical - whether you win or lose is decided by the economic system you create to churn out and support units, and the logistics you used to get your armies in place. Civ doesn't care much for the battle itself. However the strategic depth is what draws people to the game - it strikes a nice balance between strategic depth and game simplicity. You can play a much more strategic game like Victoria II, but it doesn't have that kind of simplicity.
FWIW, I think the tactical system used in fantasy games, including Elemental, is just as abstract. Both these systems originated from casual board games and they reflect the simplicity that medium. You're supposed to be having epic battles, except it feels like moving chess pieces around a board. I really wish more 4x games would adopt fully fledged tactical combat like Total War or Dominions 3 or Hearts of Iron.
I'm sad to agree Falconne2. I keep tyring to play Elemental for short bursts, but, at this time there is just way too little strategy to keep me interested in any way. My other gaming friends are passing on "El" to get Civ 5, so, that means I can either play El solo for months and months till it, hopefully, becomes strategically deep and has MP, while I play vs a "wacky" AI (it feels empty whether I win OR lose), or get Civ 5 and play with my friends. . .
Quote looked fine to me. They make these sort of [INPUT WORD HERE] all the time in quotes. See a history book as they do it so that the readers know what the books or quote is talking about. It certainly doesn't mean your a corrupt Congressman, Senator, Lobbyist, or Presidential Candidate from Washington, DC.
LOL, I'd forgotten about THAT. They messed up the packaging and disks if I remember correctly. I believe there were also multiplayer issues that had to be ironed out. I, for one, always got OOS errors when doing multiplayer.
tbh, singleplayer was pretty solid though.
Me and 2 other friends of mine have already preordered civ5. Assuming that Elemental has a good post release support which will make it a fun alternative to Civ5 and that it will be packed with an expansion at a budget price i will buy it istantly and i think my 2 friends also.
What saved us from burning 50 euros on Elemental as it was released was the release of Demigod which made us wait for reviews or player feedback.
I really hope that Stardock learn that their public image is more affected by crappy releases than hype and Gamers Bill of rights.Facts not words!
Not buying Civ 5 - been there and done that enough with that series of games.
Looking forward to being along for the ride as Elemental evolves.
The battles in the Civ games are all about RNG basically. It's possible to beat a tank with a warrior, and I don't like it. ..as for tactical battles: I think it's a must have in a strategy game, because it adds a lot to the gameplay.....but that is my subjective opinion of course.
I chose Elemental over Civ 5 because Firaxis apparently thought a turn-based strategy game needed state-of-the-art graphics, and I think it's insane that you need a monster gaming rig to play a turn-based game. Plus, I really like the idea of playing a character that actually inhabits the game world. Oh, and I'm also not particularly enthused with 2K's DRM or this whole idea of selling you parts of the game piecemeal via DLC.
Hey, I'm from that universe, too!
You know, something tells me that if Elemental had the name "Sid Meier" on the box that the reviews would have been considerably more charitable.
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