When the reviews came out, I thought, What are they complaining about? It isn't that bad. Meanwhile I haven't played the game even once. I don't count messing around with it a few times during beta. I just don't feel any compulsion to play the game.
In my case is completely the opposite. I got a bit disapointed after the game was released. But I am so positively surprised at how much the game has improved with minor patches in so little time. Now I have a feeling that 1.1 will be great.
Sorry in advance if this strikes anyone as flamebait.
I just bought Civilization 5, and I'm amazed by a. how polished it is and fun it is to play (though there are some graphical glitches every few hours that require a restart) and b. how many of the new things introduced in this version of Civilization are mirrored in Elemental. I didn't think it was possible for a game released in 2010 to be a Civilization 5 clone, but Elemental is one.
I'd gotten fired up over a video posted on Rock Paper Shotgun and pre-ordered Elemental. I've hungered for a new turn-based strategy game with RPG elements for a long time. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm got the better of me.
I've played Stardock games in the past: Galactic Civilizations and Demigod. I didn't like either one of them. I didn't play either one for more than an hour.
I've never participated in a beta before, so take this with a grain of salt: I don't see any difference whatsoever between the beta and release versions of Elemental.
All of these factors taken together lead me to conclude that Elemental just isn't worth bothering with anymore. Maybe I'll come back to it after the expansions, but I now see it as a waste of time. (Of course, I also see Civilization 5 as a waste of time; but at least a fun waste of time.)
I now expect Stardock's Forum Nazis to lock this threat, delete this comment, and ban me. Thanks and goodbye.
Elemental is a Civ 5 clone? The level of WTF in that statement is incredible. Yes, I think you can say that Elemental is certainly inspired by the Civilization franchise, but how could Elemental, a game that came out before Civilization 5 be a clone of it? Well. I don't get it, but that's cool, have fun with Civ 5.
It isn't possible. You could call them twins if you like, but you can't clone something that didn't exist.
Talk about catch-22: how could you see or not see any differences between the beta version & release version if you've never participated in the beta version before?
Perhaps some kind of psychic ability? [e digicons]\o/[/e]
Finally! I was growing tired of your absolutely dreary attitude.
Elemental might not be the gem everyone expected but it has more potential than most games, especially Civ 5. And I know many are pinning all their hopes on 1.1 but I'm looking far beyond that. Believe me, a bit of tweaking won't satisfy me. Once they attended to the complaints on AI, gameplay, etc, I'm expecting a bit more work done on the setting as a whole. Like many others, I'm hoping for a world with more personality and more depth, one where you can lose yourself in war, adventure, or even politics.
Civ 5 makes me want to gag. Firaxis has had its own share of Oh Noes! moments. Like making the mod browser only look at your C: drive. for one. Steam- only is kind of BS to me when Civ 4 sells on Impulse. [e digicons][/e] Plus it's crap. No game I bought off Impulse loads up Impulse then loads your game. Losers. There's fairly good mods out there. I can't believe the number of balance mods. OMG. The map mods I know would be coming. Yay. Also those maps made with Babylon are invalid to everyone else. The mod buddy doesn't always install your mods right, may have to go manual install. I won't get into gameplay issues. Anyways back to topic..
I've not a lot of enthusiasm for Elemental, but I know it'll get better. Just takes time. I'm still getting memory errors and have not been able to play a game from start to end. In the meantime its just not fun to play. I think heroes and magic system need to be addressed. Also city management and advisors. From a design standpoint need to consider map size from tiny to HUGE. The list on the left side of screen isn't going to cut it. Heroes need to be more random. AI shouldn't be married at the start unless the player can. Why not make that an option for 10 creation points? Magic system. Yeah there's spells but so far to me it's kind of meh. One element is no different than the other really. Meh. Some summons and some damage. Plus a port and raise lower/land. Meh. From a strategic standpoint the ones for buff to city are outstanding and useful - my concern is the cost to keep them. Back to what I expect from magic system. Along the lines of its predecessor MoM. Unless you can improve and add upon that. Barring that, some similar buff type spells or enchantments are what's lacking, again IMO, but.. things like + to stats from a measly plus 1 or 2 to 20 (or more) to tackle Titans or whatever bad high end creatures are out there.
Game needs naval warfare, fishery for food or money. Also water walking spell would be great if one doesn't already exist. Or Flying (All movement is treated as roads or 1).. Different types of naval boats to build from basic wood, to iron clads, magic frigates (Cannons that shoot fireballs? ), some kind of battle ship..
Playing Elemental for several hours on release day killed all my enthusiasm for the game. It was blatantly obvious that many hundreds of hours of development time needed to go into the game to actually make it worth me playing. I tried playing it with the recent patches, and *some* of the most glaring out of memory errors were solved but not all. Its not the bugs that stopped me playing it however, the game is just bland and not much fun.
For the moment I have shelved Elemental. I will pop back and try it out when each expansion comes out, but I suspect that I will need to wait for both expansions to be released for Stardock to release all the gameplay problems (particularly the tactical combat). Im still a bit worried that design decisions like making all the factions essentially the same, will force me to rely on modders to make it more interesting.
With Kael as the new project leader, my excitement for the future of the game has jumped orders of magnitude higher. I assume that others feel similarly.
Now, I love Civ V too, but, zoom in on a city in Civ V and you'll see a few little un-animated cubes. Compare that to the full-of-life cities of Elemental. Fully animated, little people going about their lives, talking, working. Flags wave, windmills turn...I wouldn't say Civ V is more polished.
I assume so, but I doubt I'm the only person on the planet who'd never heard of em til now.
Gee, that's too bad.
You're not alone there. I'm not much of a fan of the Civ games. The combat killed it for me long ago. With as deep as the rest of the game's systems are, I find combat in ALL the Civ games to be bland and boring. Because of this I never bought Civ 4 and hence have never played the FfH Mod. Unless the Mod drastically over-hauled the combat and put in real battles even a high fantasy setting couldn't make me like the Civ combat mechanics. I mean seriously, they couldn't even make a game with both a Strategical Campaign Map AND a Tactical Combat Map? Really? Even MoO and MoO2 had tactical battles and they are far older than the Civ games (at least MoO1 is older than the Civ games). By no means do I think combat should be the bread and butter of the Civ games, not at all, but it still could have been handled much better than it was. Even "Advanced Wars" on the Game-Boy has better combat than the Civ games IMO.
As long as Kael doesn't go trying to turn Elemental into something with the combat mechanics of the Civ games I'll be happy. Not knowing his previous work I have no reason to inherently like or dis-like the guy. He's working on a "clean slate" as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how combat was handled in his Mod so I can't comment on that. With as many people here who are happy he was hired on though I expect good things from him. Any impression he makes on me as a designer/developer will come from what he does here with Elemental.
It's certainly a fair point to dislike the way combat is handled in Civ, but then again, combat isn't the focus, and I think if they had gone for the additional tactical map it would have slowed the game to a crawl without adding much. Because for one thing, tactical combat AIs suck in general, and giving the player yet another place to cheese the AI is neither interesting nor wise (the decision to not include tactical combat in GC2 was a good one I thought).
Also, comparisons to 'node' based games like the MoO series are inappropriate, because Civ has an open strat map (though bounded by impassible terrain as opposed to GC2 where there are no bounds, other than the edges). Civ combat is much more about strategic placement of your forces. Of course, SoDs don't seem strategic, but their composition and movement require at least some forethought in what and where you produce. Also depending on the map size (or player density if you prefer) the game speed, the era... combat and SoDs are very different.
Yes eventually you have tanks and artillary and tons of units and railroads and you can just shove your SoD around nearly at will, however, the beginning portions of the game, before you have a complete road network (and even if you do on larger maps you still can't just get forces anywhere quickly) predicting where the hot spot(s) will be is important, and garrisoning your border cities is critical. Unit mix (due to the semi RPS system in place) is important, and if you're missing the right counter you will get chewed on, or at least take higher losses than necessary.
The actual combat resolution is not particularly interesting, I agree, but it works well enough, and is a sound enough system to make it not overly prone to cheese tactics like the system in Civ3 was.
Granted, your ultimate goal is always the same, the SoD composition is (resource dependent) always the same, and the way you use the SoD is nominally always the same. I don't see that so much as a negative though, because most games wind up like that. The interesting part is getting to the point where you have your SoD or have your counter to the AIs SoD(s).
But yeah, if you are thinking Civ is about combat you will be disappointed.
Oh, and I should mention that the focus in FFH is on fewer more powerful units rather than swarms of infantry crawling over everything. Some of the modmods probably take that a bit further, at least WildMana seems to from my limited experience with it. The 'leveling' of your units in both Civ and FFH is fun and meaningful in my opinion.
I have said it before but will do so again.
Any game with a "5" at the end of its name, should be "vastly" better (just because) than one that is yet to have even see it first Major (1.1) update, let alone a second iteration.
Given 5 chances to make something from the same set of parts has to be very advantageous to that creator. A first pass using a brand new set of "things" is obviously, well to some anyways, not as easy.
Having said that, 1.1 should be quite interesting and the changes from 1.0 to 1.09 certainly show how fast things can be "corrected", for lack of a better term, really.
I have faced many games that have "growing pains" and as such don't find E:WoM's any different. I, like most others I suppose, would love to buy the final product from the shelf but the Industry apparently operates on a different set of assumptions.
Complaining about what has become the "norm" is pointless. If you are dissatisfied, after spending money, do more research, don't fall for the hype, and or display that dissatisfaction with the use of your wallet, or lack thereof.
I have stayed with the Medium Map size for now as I know roughly how long a game will take on them but I am still quite psyched to get my butt onto a Immense or whatever the MAX size will be/become as E:WoM is FUN when you don't nitpick the shit out of it.
The whole "Alpha" to now "Beta Z (1.0)", and beyond, experience has been kinda neat. Really shows the full requirement to create a game. I do honestly believe that a game is never really done and am glad SD feels the same way. I have many games that just sorta stop growing, when obviously they required more growth.
So carry on SD. Time will be both your friend and your enemy. It will only matter who who ask which way it goes.
Well in the case of Civ, they do reinvent the games from iteration to iteration. Some times there are more changes than others, but they are not 'from the same parts' other than the setting I suppose.
New engines are new engines, as Brad has pointed out, that's where the real differences and potentials lie. Elemental isn't even anything groundbreakingly new... yet.
Now MoO3 was something 'new', but the less said about that the better probably
I've seen Brad apply that logic in a not-so-direct fashion in several of his posts, and I completely disagree. If you set out to create a game, it should stand on its own merits, regardless of what went before, what engine you're using, what platform you're building on, etc. And that game will be, and SHOULD be, compared to its contemporaries, not game one of whatever series is being rehashed by the current iteration of its contemporaries.
The only expectation for the game with the "5" at the end of its name is a somewhat familiar game experience; that does not equate to the game being somehow vastly better than something "new", or something "new" being given a free pass.
^^^^ very well said.
This is my experience exactly, and I imagine the experience of many.
I'm a fan of Stardock and GalCiv, so I still have some hope. I check out the forums every once in a while to see what is going on because I really want to like this game one day. I just think that day is still a ways off.
The biggest impact Elemental had on me is that I don't think I will ever buy another game on release day again - StarDock certainly didn't deserve my $50 for Elemental. Hopefully they can earn it over the next few months.
I can agree with a good part of that. Any gamer who knows his games should know the Civ games are not combat centric. They are on a much larger scale of empire management. It's just my opinion though that combat should have been deeper. I agree it isn't what the main-stay of the series should be though. We have the TW games for that. The best game to be made IMO would be one that mixes the deep and involved battles from the best war games with the depth of empire management and diplomacy the Civ games have. Some day, hopefully from Stardock, we'll see a game like that.
The only other part of your reply I disagree with is the lack of GC2 having battles being a good thing. To me that's the Only Thing GC2 is missing to be the Best Space Strategy game of All Time. If it had tactical battles as well involving those massive fleets you can make it would be the King of Kings of Space Strategy games to me, even killing off MoO and MoO2.
The AI being susceptible to cheese tactics you're going to run into in any game that doesn't have a AI coding genius at it's helm during programming. A good Game AI takes years to write, which is why the AI in Stardock's games tend to be a lot better than the AI's in most other games of their types because Brad updates the AI's he works on for years and is always adding better tactics and strategies for the AI to use against the players.
Take Elemental for example, just as GC2 saw massive improvements AI wise over the last few years of it's updates, I'm sure we'll see the same here. A year or two from now, I'm sure the AI in Elemental will be able to handle just about any cheese the player will be able to throw at it. From time to time even now the GC2 AI will pull a late game come back and wipe me out, and I consider my-self a Master at that game. That's the sign of a well developed AI if you ask me, but, something like that takes time to accomplish. Knowing Stardock supports their games for so long and improves them is one of the reasons why I buy their games when I pass up so many others.
After hiring Kael my hopes for 1.1 diminished a little. If the 1.1 will be released in October it won't contain Kael's work. So I guess now I'm waiting for 1.2. With a little more diversity and lots of new content:) Although the Kael's role is not completely clear. E.g. can he introduce some major idea that could change the core aspects of the game?... dunno.
I think he is primarily here (as of 1.1) to keep things focused from an objective outsider's perspective. Even when working on his own mod, he seemed to take things quite objectively.
I suppose his main role will be a "unification" of design, structure it within current limitations, push the engine designers to build a better engine ... and essentially set a deadline and stick to it.
I've taken a bit of a break while waiting for 1.1. Been playing Civ V and some other games. At this point I don't want to spend a bunch of time learning the ins and outs of the game when I know they will change drastically, especially because I like to use magic a lot. Still a great game, but I don't wee myself playing much 'till 1.1.
Raven-
I meant it was a good idea for GC2 to eschew tac combat given the way ships were designed and the pure RPS aspect of it. Had they chosen to make a fuller weapons tech tree it may have made more sense, but then again, if you want TW in space you already have SotS.
Now I'd be ecstatic if someone took the StarFire system and put that into the tactical battles of their space 4x, but so far I've not really seen it. I guess SE is close, but I dunno, SE always left me cold for some reason.
Even so, the cheese factor of tactical combat is just so high, that it can make it rather unfun actually. With the AI in mind going the route GC2 did was smart because it takes out that entire issue, and also, because GC2 was 'civ in space' anyway.
Actually the combat in MoO3 was pretty good, forcing you to control your Carriers, missle ships, long range, short range, ... though the UI for it wasn't great, but it still strikes me as one of the better implementations. It's close to SotS, but SotS is on a different scale, MoO3 you had 100s of ships (1000s if you modded it) going at it. SotS is smaller scale with individual ship control, and thus micro, being more critical.
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