Thank you for the detailed reply Brad.

It is, though I should have been more specific about TBS.  I have no interest in RTS, no matter how pausable it is, unless it is a SotS or TW design.  Or MoO3 for that matter.

Well I think you have it right then, and I'm hopeful you get the systems changed to be more interesting.  Would it be possible to see a dev journal on the teams ideas for correcting tac battles and magic?

Well it sounds as though some of us may wind up waiting for Elemental 2 to be really happy then.  Unless you decide a new engine is required   Unless the expansions are able to address these issues.

Well yes, though my thought was more along the lines of having a crisp and clean tac combat model in mind *before* starting the engine.  Same for magic, same for the goodie huts (well MoM had those anyway) same for quests, ...  I don't know how detailed the DD was, I don't know how ambitious it was, I don't know if the engine was underway before or during the DD process.  I do know from my experience with DDs is that you cannot start building until you've finished the DD.  Of course you have to be able to adjust and adapt as time/money concerns come into play.  This isn't a criticism of your process as I don't know what the process was other than following the beta.  I just feel that the main elements of the game which people agree are lacking, were not given enough attention at a very early point such that once the ball started rolling the dreams of how to implement them were shattered and going back to redesign the engine was not an option.  You say you've learned a lot from this project, I hope this was one of the lessons.

I hear you, and sympathize.  I do have faith that the game will rise its ashes (perhaps that's too dramatic?) though.

With large, complex software it is difficult to change / add things, and not just because of how long it would take the implement the new feature. Once you add change something you must make sure that it works and there maybe 'collateral damage' where now other things are not working besides what was actually changed. For example, in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic resurrect works on both your troops and enemy troops. It was suppose to only work on your troops, and they tried to fix it in a patch. The 'fix' simply caused the game to crash whenever resurrect was used; therefore, they unfixed it. In the end it is a matter of how much time and resources the developers are willing to put into it that determines the limitations, and in Elemental's case it was decided (after working late for far too long) that it would be better to not change the engine.

As I spin around in circles trying to figure out what I can do with quest generation, I find myself unsure various features are even functional right now.  Odds are they don't, I'm probably still an utter moron though.  It's an easy answer.  The more complex the system, the more you screw up with every change.  It's like a watch, change the size of a part and the whole thing goes to hell.  To make one part smaller, you have to make the entire system smaller.

So true, I would love to still be able to be the unreasonable fan requiring new strategy games to be 2D, I've seen this trend in all games since the additional of 3D, but I don't think there is any way to make a 2D game anymore without restricting yourself to be an indi-game. But models asside, MOM also had some really cool racial traits. I love that you have focused on the engine first, we just have to hope it is good enough for the modders and future release to add more content.

I'm a pretty big fan of FFH2.

I realize many of you weren't in the beta but as the beta group can tell you, a lot of game mechanics in Elemental changed from the design. When you have a finished game engine to work with, it is much easier to design a good game because you know what you're working with.

One thing I'm curious about- and a possible suggestion.

Is Kumquat going to be just in-house, or are you going to try licensing it out?

One potential idea: use free Kumquat in a way Valve is using Steamworks to get games on Impulse, maybe even exclusives?  (maybe free if exclusive, cheap if you use it to sell on other DD platforms)

Licensing an engine wasn't really an option.  It's one of the reasons you see fewer and fewer ambitious games from small developers.  Even in our case, we spend nearly $100k licensing various techs. If we had licensed an engine the cost would have been $500k to $2M depending on which one and we'd have to license it over and over again.

I guess that explains why there's about one total war remake released every week.

That's insane.  Thank you, btw, for being so forthcoming with figures.  So, where is the break-even point (#copies sold) for a licensed engine vs in-house?

Obviously the intention is to re-use the engine many times, like Paradox does with theirs.

Paradox has had a successful licensing/partnership scheme, though they only made their older engine available. 

I think it just blurs game's focus.  When I look at Elemental, I want a Strategy game, first and foremost.

Aren't there any open source engines like Ogre3d you could use?

Have you considered making the engine itself open source while keeping the rest of the E:WOM assets such as art and story propriertary? This way you could sell the game, but allow the community to help with bugs and development if they so wished, plus you'd get far more powerful total mods.

That's awesome.  As much as I like FFH2, it will be great having his abilities applied to an engine actually built for magic use (unlike the Civ 4 engine).  And he comes from a D&D background gaming-wise, so he gets magic resistance etc.  Big win for Elemental.

OMG... I have never played FFH2, but i just looked at the manual.. insane.. FFH2 is the exact opposite of SD game philosophy. Tons of interesting choices, 

Different traits and abilities, each civ plays totally differently, no RPS type balancing etc.. 

I hope he gets his say in determining the direction of EWOM (I rather have a slightly weaker AI if the game is more fun..), if his influence is felt in the game (and this isn't some PR stunt of some sort), I'm really starting to to believe EWOM might actually have a fighting chance of actually being as good as MOM...

But what are his exact responsibilities again?