Hi there everyone,
I've been following the progress of this game religiously since I first heard about it (which was not long before release). I've always loved fantasy based strategy games, like Master of Magic, or even my recently discovered FFH2 mod for CIV4.
For someone like myself who likes these types of games.. is Elemental fun? Or if not yet, are people confident enough to recommend it for how they envision it for the future? The reason I am asking, is I saw the latest post by Frogboy stating that the new add-ons will only be free for people who purchase before October 31st. I guess the point of his post, was to convince people such as myself who are still sitting on the fence regarding making the purchase.
Can people give recommendations? I assume most people here have purchased the game already.. but I'm wondering if I am better off foregoing the free expansions and only purchasing in the future when I know the game is as good as most people hope it to be.
Cheers
Simon
I'm still not buying it, because they still haven't fixed the things which need to be fixed for me to enjoy it.
At this point I'm not sure they ever will 'fix' them the way I would like them to be fixed, so I may just wind up passing on it entirely, in spite of my desire to support SD, I'm not supporting them for something I don't think I would enjoy.
I don't buy the whole 'support them, because even though it 'sucks' now they will fix it' argument since I would reject that business model anywhere else. Of course everyone has a different opinion of 'sucks' and what needs to be 'fixed'.
If you've been following the forums over the past several months I'd imagine you can come up with your own opinion about how much you think you will enjoy the current state of the game, and what the current direction (1.1) is going to add.
I'd be much happier if they put out a demo as well, but that's another discussion, and has more to do with me wanting to see how well my old system will handle the game, which probably isn't much of a concern to most people with systems less than 6 years old
Just out of interest what do you think needs to be "fixed" for you to enjoy the game, I assume you haven't actually played it since you haven't bought it but sounds like you have some pretty strong ideas about how it currently works and how it should work anyway, so I'd be interested to hear them.
As for the demo you'll be pleased to hear that they do plan to release the demo once 1.1 is out (because 1.1 is a pretty major change to the game they are waiting until then).
As for their business model, I don't believe the intention was to release a broken game and then fix it. However having made the mistake of doing so they are doing everything they can to remedy the situation.
Anyway sure you'll try the demo on your old system since you have nothing to loose there.
Not sure if my way is the best way to "figure out the food thing" but it was tricky for me at first too. Basically just use caravans to ONE MAIN food producing city in your back lines. have it protected, and when a caravan dies, build it again, and send it back to the food city (usually my capital). This alleviates ALL food problems, unless you are playing on a hard level AI, and you take over their cities and the have a massive negative food balance (like a city with 2400 people, imagine the houses they need) as soon as you do that, BEFORE you hit end turn, burn off some of them houses for awhile. You don't need 2400 peeps anyway. I always try and keep a +10 food or so, before I steamroll the AI.
cheers
FishSlayer - You do realize that with version 1.1 they are removing the link between Food & Caravans. This strategy will be DOA. Not picking on you personally, I think we'll all have plenty of rethinking to do given all the changes being made. Back to square one everybody!
If you like Fantasy turn based strategy games I do not think there is any better. The Civ games are fun but I prefer fantasy to "real world" things like tanks and planes. It makes the abstract nature of units more believable. The AI could be better... ie building killer stacks and focusing spells and archers on your King to eliminate you from the game but no complaints here. Like other empire builder games, once you build a strong stack with magic, archers/catapults and a few blocking infantry units you can roll through opponents to win the game. Sometimes I like to do the quests or magic path and win that way. All in all it is a great time and I think multi-player will make it better.
Well tac combat is key to me. The initial concepts for how to handle it were what excited me. The turn based slog it appears to be, as well as the lack of interesting ideas to 'fix' it are leaving me cold. Maybe it will come together, I hope it does, but for the time being I'm just not impressed with it.
The economy also appears to be borked. Yes, it is undergoing changes, but again, I go back to the early concepts for how everything was supposed to tie together, and that is out the window. Again, I'm not seeing any particularly revolutionary ideas in Elemental. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm also not seeing the current system going anywhere which I haven't seen before, and done better in other games.
I'm likely to wait until the expansions are out and see how much development happens in them. Also by that time I may have upgraded my system and my other concerns won't be issues anymore.
I am pleased that people are enjoying the game though. I've just been around long enough to have decided not to spend my money on games which are unlikely to have much staying power (for me). GalCiv2 failed for me, so it's not as though I don't have a track record with SD which hasn't had a bump in it, it's also not that I don't get how SD does things.
What would I like to see? I'd like to see a fantasy themed game based off of a Paradox type engine personally. Though with combat being split out into some kind of tactical mode.
elemental will not be this (nor was Dominions exactly, but Dominions is not an effective SP game anyway).
In this case I agree with you elemental is never going to be exactly what you want. Myself I think tac combat could do with some improving certainly but I'm one of the people who was happy when it went turn based. Anyway in view of that your clearly doing the right thing by waiting and maybe skipping it altogether.
On the economy that's all up in the air at the moment so certainly a wait and see attitude is sensible on that.
I hope you do find that game your looking for one day anyway.
Thank you. I will probably never be completely satisfied, but knowing this about myself, I can often find entertainment even when it doesn't quite hit every spot I want hit
And no, I was not so upset about tac battles being turn based, just the way turn based was implemented. This might change, and it might change enough to satisfy me. Or I may just wait until the expansions are out and there's a sale and be happy with experimenting with it at that point.
The disappointment is hard though, because I have been following elemental since it's inception was made public (and likely even earlier...) and the delivered product is no where near what I was hoping for. Of course I was prepared for this (I did mention GalCiv2 right?) and while I have been alternately supportive and critical, I have stuck to my position of not buying games which are not 'ready' (for me).
I find it amusing the back and forth which goes on at release, especially a release like Elemental suffered through. Well, I stick around, watching and hoping, let's hope everyone will be happy at some point.
Like I said in the other thread, for me at least, I think this game is still probably pipped at the post by other games like HOMM5 and AOW/AOW2:SM. They are prettier games and lots of fun and lots to do. I think this game is still a little bit thin and needs fleshing out some more.
The key issue though, is that the other games are what they are and will never improve, whereas Elemental is comparable to those but is still not complete. They are releasing patches regularly and they have pretty much sorted out all the bug type issues now. So now they are just going to focus on fleshing the game itself out, and you can see the direction that it's going to go beyond what HOMM and AOW ever did. There is more scope to this game, so once they start patching that in, I think it will be the best game of it's kind. I don't know how far they will go with patches and adding stuff, but people here seem to think they will go a long way, and Stardock certainly have a good reputation so I'm inclined to believe they will just keep adding to this game until it's the best. It's not TOO far already, so I'm pretty excited.
yeah, i heard that.
1-- I dont believe anything a dev says about "upcoming features" until I see them.
2-- It is probably gonna be changed, despite point 1 above
3-- The food thing I said works now, and the person I replied to is playing the game now. I assumed his statement about figuring out the food had to do with the game TODAY as he is playing it, and not based on some futuristic update that isn't even in beta, or whatever they called it. yes, the screen shots looked nice, but let's see how the stress test goes.
4-- So yes, I agree my strat won't work then (most likely) but when 1.1 comes out, I will figure how to get food, (eventually) and if someone else has a question regarding it, I will chime in on what works for me. Hopefully that keeps the game fun for them, as opposed to them saying "crap this game sucks, I can't even feed my population". Believe it or not, I read some posts about that a few weeks ago. Then someone told them to use caravans and the posts stopped.
Huh... I never knew that about Caravans... Honestly, food was never that big a problem for me until after I conquered other people's realms...
Fish, it's nice to see you helping the people out. Kudos man.
By the way guys, this thread is officially dead. Romantiq, (The OP), already purchased the game.
Whoa whoa whoa... Stop the presses. If you didn't know about the caravan thing, how do you feed your populations? LOL. Maybe I am doing it wrong. I can't even get like 4 cities up and running without caravans. And gosh forbid when I take over an AI city on ridiculous that is automatically another -20 food or so I gotta account for somewhere.
Just trying to be funny.
But seriously, if you weren't using caravans, HOW DID you feed your cities? Did you just have a couple, and all level 1-2 or so???
Right now I am in turn 268 of some game, max opponents, ridiculous.... +118 food was my last memory of glancing at the top bar. I am only here in the forums, cause the game memory leak crashed and I get angry, so don't play for a bit... let my machine catch up in memory dump... post a couple scathing posts... then log off and go kill some AI!!!!
~cheers
And thanks for the kudos... I only usually post in forums, to help newbs out. (even if I am one of them). or to offer my opinion to the devs about what I like/dislike. In hopes of helping the game succeed (kinda like a free Focus Group for them. LOL)
Well, I play on Large maps with either 10 or 11 Realms, depending on if I'm using one of my custom creations or not.
On average, I'd say, given a decent enough start, I get 7-8 cities of my own. Probably one level 4, 3-5 level 3's, and the rest level 2, before my food caps out. At this point, I'm rarely far up enough in any tech tree for it to make a difference however, so that's usually when I conquer my closest neighbor for access to additional food resources, which usually nets me another 8-ish cities, and somehow, enough food to keep growing. I make heavy heavy use of Irrigation Systems/Fungi Storehouses and Granaries to artificially boost my food count, and if I can get access to them, I generally never hesitate to hire Farmer Heroes. If and when I -do- run out, I hit up the Adventure/Domination trees for Lost Maps/Isildar's Bounty techs for access to additional food resources. It's about this time that I usually get a level 5 city up and running, and start gearing up to conquer the rest of the world or pursue whatever victory it is that I'm going for.
Edit: Basically, I don't rely on having a cadre of level 5 cities to do my work for me, and play a slower-roll than I expect most people do.
Have to say I didn't know either, I play on large maps and normally have 1 level 5 city and a couple of level 3/4 cities plus lots of level 2 cities by the late game. My food stratergy is to build small villages near additional food resources I find and to research and use food enhancing tech. It's probably slower than your method but it gets there in the end.
ok.. to the two posters above me. I still am not completely on board with what you are saying. Yes, I understand the words that are coming out of your mouth... (chris tucker ftw), but I still don't see how it works. I believe you guys, but it doesn't seem to be that way for me. First of all, how do you get a lvl 5 city so fast??? without taking one over. On Ridiculous I NEVER EVER NEVER EVER made my own lvl 5. Basically I conquer some city who has about 4x the pop that my capital does. I then use that one or so, to hit lvl 5. I just popped over to my current save game I am messing around with. Here are some stats.
Yes, I could ROFLSTOMP at any second, But I am letting my OCD get the better part of me... I am terraforming all the mountains in my realm, and trying to get my 6 main armies ready to annihilate everyone at the same time. There is about 6 AI left. Anywhere from 5-15 cities they have, Anywhere from 600 to 1400 "power rating" they have.
I am playing on EMPIRE so I get the multiple caravans tech... Oh yeah, I never "target" any particular tech. I just keep them all even until I get to "refined" in that category, then I move to one that still has normal techs. OK, now my stats (lvl 17-20 in all techs, All spells through lvl 9 researched. working on lvl 10 spell tech)
Me. Empire. 22 cities.
ZERO level 5 cities
1 Level 4 city
6 level 3 cities
The rest level 2.
I have power of 963.
I am rolling 297 gold per turn surplus. 580 surplus bread. (lol, yeah not a typo, I never had more than 100 or so before, but somehow I got almost 600. I think it is because I been playing it slow, And making sure my caravans are efficient. I got 4 "bread cities" with multi caravans to each. I do not know how the 580 came up. I did hit "Refining Farming" twice. I also have two dudes (one in each of my two MAIN bread cities) that boost bread by 10%.
Turn is 368. I have four kids. 24 girl, 19 girl, 12 boy, 3 girl.
Anyway, I just took over a city for fun (neighbor, level 4... It gave me a net loss of 30 bread. This will stay until I caravan and it overcomes the deficit.
So to sum up, I think my game is not hard to do, if you use caravans... But I have no idea how you guys get lvl 5 cities, without using caravans.. Not just the food issue, but the population issue. My first city (Capital1Food) as I like to call him, Has a whopping 460 people in it. Yeah I used it to maybe pump out about 40-50 units. So I guess it could be hitting 500. Maybe 600 if I prestige'd it... I can not imagine how I would take over a lvl 5 city of AI (assuming it wasn't their capital, which always seems to have about 5 food resources) and be able to absorb the food deficit they are allowed to run.
Next game, (If I play another before 1.1) I gonna try with no caravans. I also seem to think I have problems "popping" resources". I know such n such tech says "spawns food" or "spawns gold" or something like that. But when I do those it usually spawns some crappy +3 food resource... or something. Heck I did the one for Crystal before And I didn't get any. I dunno... Maybe this is a good thing. You guys can beat it on Ridiculous with no caravans. But honestly I have zero idea how. I can't even build my own lvl 5 city based on POP increases. I usually take over some city with like 900 peeps, and just keep jacking that one up. My capital has maybe hit lvl 5 once in all the games I played and that was on hard or so.
A short answer with qualifications: NO
The qualifications - I like my turn based strategy games featuring tactical combat to have either interesting tactical combat game mechanics or to have challenging computer opponents, and whether the latter is gained through decent strategic AI or through giving the computer opponents enough bonuses to compensate for their inferiority is less important though I prefer the former, and preferably both.
Elemental 1.09 gets, from my view as a veteran strategy gamer, a very low score in both of those categories. It is neither challenging nor provides interesting tactical battles - the only real reason to fight the tactical battles is that the automatic battle resolution consistently gives you much worse results than fighting them by hand and using the most basic of tactics. (And I do mean basic. Think along the lines of: "1) Use AOE if lots of enemies massed together, 2) Conserve mana: Don't use any spells if you can defeat the enemy without casualties or serious harm despite not casting spells")
All of this could be ignored if the game had some revolutionary design feature that I considered great fun, something causing that "just one more turn..." feeling. It doesn't. It may to others, but certainly not to me.
The game clearly has a lot of potential - that has been clear since release - so I have devoted time to testing every patch since release, but while many of the outright bugs that infested the release version have been addressed, the underlying design flaws, and they are considerable, have not. Many of these are set to be addressed in the future, we have been assured, but my previously strong belief in the ability of Mr. Wardell to recognize good design (to say nothing of game balance) when he sees it was severely shaken by the state Elemental was in upon release, for which he bears sole responsibility due to his multiple hats in Stardock and on the development team, and will take years to recover. It wasn't particularly fun to see Elemental slaughtered by the other game developers on QT3, but it was well deserved.
In its current state, Elemental is a working bad game. That is a huge improvement on launch status but it is not good enough for me. It might be for you and I can pretty much guarantee you that whether it is or not you WILL have fun for the first few days after getting the game as you start playing and learning how the game works. (Well, unless your game gets stuck in one of those stupid "a bug prevents you from advancing to the next turn - this persists through saving/reloading the game" situations and you don't have a recent save without the behaviour, one of the showstopping bugs that remains in the game as of 1.09 and happened in my 1.09 test game but is, as I've understood it, pretty rare).
I would like to say "Go buy it, I am sure that it will be worth it eventually once Stardock gets around to rewriting the most bloody stupid parts of the game engine and, in addition, makes it a challenging game", but while I do have faith that Stardock will overhaul the game engine as promised, I no longer have any faith that this is guaranteed to result in a better game and thus my answer must be: No.
If you have more faith than me, then by all means, go and buy it.
If you want a good strategy fantasy wargame, go buy Illwinter Game Design's Dominions 3 if you don't have it already. It has a few years on its back. The art is poor, the AI is bad, the interface is worse, and user friendliness is nothing to write home about, but you get the deepest fantasy strategy game released in the history of computer gaming with the greatest number of meaningful choices. In SP it is merely a good game, due to the aformentioned poor AI, but in multiplayer, for the person who likes long-term multiplayer games where strategy and diplomacy are at a premium, it shines. It also comes with a ~300 page manual for those of us who like bricks.
I'vm usually able to get level 5 on my capital by turn 350ish by not maximizing efficiency (i.e. sometimes I realize I've gotten housing capped) on human kingdom, with over 100 cities in my empire, many captured, 100+ caravans, 150 gold, 100 food (some trade routes are designed not for food but for highway efficiency: so I can move horse archer armies through woods faster, etc). Problem is, the game is usually all but over at this time so it doesn't matter. I've never bothered to build that last level 5 wonder of the world, it just never matters because the game is over for all intents & purposes by this time. There's no strategic value for having level 5 cities because the game is all but over at that point.
I do have a fair number of my early caravan routes going to the capital, later in the game my routes all all over the map, literally, mainly to maximize military movement efficiency as food is just not an issue. I still don't understand those guys that are at negative food after taking AI cities, my experience is just teh opposite, my food supply dramatically increases after capturing those large AI cities. In fact, I can't even recall having negative food except for once or twice in the very early phases of the game (turns 1 to 50).
That memory bug is still there on 64 bit versions, and is extremely irritating at end-game. Even with auto-save every turn, when a turn takes 15/20 minutes at end game moving hundreds of units, it's tremedously irritating having to re-do an entire late game turn. Ironically, it's forcing a strategy approach in this game on my part that maximizes efficiency: the least units & least cities needed to beat the AI in the fewest # of turns before the game crashes become too irritating.
I basically agree with everything you posted. The game has huge potential & has a "limited addictiveness" as of now. I'm hoping that the 1.1 patch makes the fixes that this game desperately needs on many levels, especially the tactical combat system, otherwise I'm ready to move on back to Distant Worlds.
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