Elemental - A MoM like game
- Thread starter calmon
- Start date
I actually quite like the art style. But at the moment though, I tend to use the cloth map mostly too, because the zoomed in models are mostly entirely indistinguishable from one another. I think I read a post somewhere that they're going to be massively improving that in the next beta push (next week?) but I can't find it at the moment.
i downloaded it from impulse, if you enabled pre-release version and still nothing is showing up you may want to contact stardock directly:
sales@stardock or support@stardock or make a post on their forum:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/
sales@stardock or support@stardock or make a post on their forum:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/
Island Dog
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2007
- Messages
- 175
Where are you downloading the beta from? I have the game preordered, but nothing is showing up in Impulse. Even when I click "show pre-release versions" nothing is coming up. Elemental is listed under my registered games.
In Impulse, try resetting data in the preferences. If Elemental is in your game list you should be able to download.
DirtyFinger
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2008
- Messages
- 369
... months later ...
ah, there's the original Elemental thread.
So, how much like MoM is Elemental really (ignoring all the big bugs and major design flaws)?
ah, there's the original Elemental thread.
So, how much like MoM is Elemental really (ignoring all the big bugs and major design flaws)?
Very different gameplay-wise:
The spell-casting has nothing in common, but is going to be changed to be more MoM-like this month. So talking about it now is probably a loss of time.
There is no forging of custom magic items, only predesigned items you can pay for if you have the tech.
There are no worthy heroes that you'd like to hire, only worthless heroes.
You can marry (particularly if you play a female) and get children who become heroes.
There are tech trees, two of them depending on your faction.
There is nothing that makes you believe your faction/race is different from your neighbour.
There is a world background and a back-story.
There is a unit workshop, so you can design your own units (which is why there can't be faction-specific units and a cause of blandness if you want my opinion).
There are quests, some with cool results like getting a dragon unit.
There are no flying units (well, your dragon may have wings but that's all).
Ships are rather useless and I don't think there are naval battles.
Units gaining experience only gain hit points.
Tactical battles play very differently. They should get a big overhaul hopefully. In particular, city wall effects are abstracted into enhanced hit points...
Units are made of 1, 4, 8 or 12 individuals (if you have the techs for that) instead of a fixed number, and the combat strongly favors units of many individuals over small units.
Roaming monsters won't even attack your cities, but spawn in the forests rather than from lairs.
Trade uses caravan units.
There's a single world instead of Arcanus+Myrror.
I already mentioned it, but there are no spells like the powerful MoM spells or the fun ones (growing volcanoes everywhere or turning all dead into sombies for instance).
The spell-casting has nothing in common, but is going to be changed to be more MoM-like this month. So talking about it now is probably a loss of time.
There is no forging of custom magic items, only predesigned items you can pay for if you have the tech.
There are no worthy heroes that you'd like to hire, only worthless heroes.
You can marry (particularly if you play a female) and get children who become heroes.
There are tech trees, two of them depending on your faction.
There is nothing that makes you believe your faction/race is different from your neighbour.
There is a world background and a back-story.
There is a unit workshop, so you can design your own units (which is why there can't be faction-specific units and a cause of blandness if you want my opinion).
There are quests, some with cool results like getting a dragon unit.
There are no flying units (well, your dragon may have wings but that's all).
Ships are rather useless and I don't think there are naval battles.
Units gaining experience only gain hit points.
Tactical battles play very differently. They should get a big overhaul hopefully. In particular, city wall effects are abstracted into enhanced hit points...
Units are made of 1, 4, 8 or 12 individuals (if you have the techs for that) instead of a fixed number, and the combat strongly favors units of many individuals over small units.
Roaming monsters won't even attack your cities, but spawn in the forests rather than from lairs.
Trade uses caravan units.
There's a single world instead of Arcanus+Myrror.
I already mentioned it, but there are no spells like the powerful MoM spells or the fun ones (growing volcanoes everywhere or turning all dead into sombies for instance).
DirtyFinger
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2008
- Messages
- 369
that about sums up my impression.
also:
* The music is just a generic medieval diddleydoo. no distinc tunes for the important characters or factions, like we expect from MoM and FfH2.
* No random maps (just randomized ressources and stuff). Well, MoM only had three fixed maps, too, so FfH is the winner here.
* No interesting unit abilities. First Strike? Magic Immunity? Firebreath? Arcane missiles? Nope, nothing. Heroes can get spellcasting and exiting stuff like 'increase production by x% in stationed city', but that's the peak of creativity.
* There is pseudo 3d terrain in the overland map but it serves absolutely no purpose. You can't cross mountains, but that's it.
* Marginal spell research restrictions. In MoM the amounts and level of spells you could research was limited by the amount of spellbooks you took. In Elemental spellbooks are booleans - you either have e.g. fire spells or you don't. And the spellbooks are dirt cheap.
* Bloody stupid character creation. You have a set amount of points to distribute on everything from spellbooks and attributes (strength, essence, etc), traits and equipment. Now explain to me why anyone would pay 3 points for a pointy stick (no kidding) instead of a spellbook?
nah, early alpha and not MoM at all. Even if stardock grabbed the domain http://www.masterofmagic.com/
also:
* The music is just a generic medieval diddleydoo. no distinc tunes for the important characters or factions, like we expect from MoM and FfH2.
* No random maps (just randomized ressources and stuff). Well, MoM only had three fixed maps, too, so FfH is the winner here.
* No interesting unit abilities. First Strike? Magic Immunity? Firebreath? Arcane missiles? Nope, nothing. Heroes can get spellcasting and exiting stuff like 'increase production by x% in stationed city', but that's the peak of creativity.
* There is pseudo 3d terrain in the overland map but it serves absolutely no purpose. You can't cross mountains, but that's it.
* Marginal spell research restrictions. In MoM the amounts and level of spells you could research was limited by the amount of spellbooks you took. In Elemental spellbooks are booleans - you either have e.g. fire spells or you don't. And the spellbooks are dirt cheap.
* Bloody stupid character creation. You have a set amount of points to distribute on everything from spellbooks and attributes (strength, essence, etc), traits and equipment. Now explain to me why anyone would pay 3 points for a pointy stick (no kidding) instead of a spellbook?
nah, early alpha and not MoM at all. Even if stardock grabbed the domain http://www.masterofmagic.com/
City building is in my opinion totally worth nothing in Elemental. You don't really need a building or sets of buildings to build some units. You place new items on the map in order to make your cities sprawl because that'll let your units move faster... Most buildings are awesome '+1 gold' like, while taking out one of the 77777 spiders in the forest every turn will earn you 32 gold. Each turn... City building is in no way better than MoM. MoM had a few buildings you had to choose from. Elemental has a lot of crappy buildings, and a few wonders that don't honestly feel wonderful.
kumquatelvis
Prince
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2007
- Messages
- 310
That would actually be appreciated. I was looking forward to this game, but couldn't justify purchasing it after reading the developer journals (much less the reviews). Early versions of FFHII had issues, but that was a free mod done by volunteers in their spare time, not a professional product. And that was just the early versions; modern FFHII is awesome. I think I need to wait until Elemental at least catches up.
XplorR
Chieftain
Will the mod-ability of this game allow some one to make it more interesting? Or is it too broken to do anything with it?
That really has yet to be seen. As I currently have very close to zero modding skillz, I will give Elemental modding a "go" once I prove to myself I can mod in Python with Civ IV (a game proven to be very moddable).
I've started reading up on Python, and once my "real" computer gets fixed, I'll start right away.
I already have some *proto code* written up, but it was with the intention of modding Elemental, so it prolly won't work "as planned" and require some tweaking to be applicable for Civ IV
(as in, much of it was for improving Elemental tactical battles)
Beardy Dan
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2009
- Messages
- 150
At the moment its virtually un-moddable for several reasons. Heres a few examples:
- The core rules change weekly.
- The Xml files are a mess & badly organised imo.
- There is no mod manager & All your mods are either on or off. *
- There is a folder to put mods in but none of the guys working on anything bigger than 1 file have found a way to make it work so you have to overwrite the core files.
- Xml access only atm,
- Victory conditions * cant be modded atm, and the current ones don't make a lot of sense for other settings.
* With cIV you can choose which mod you want to play. For example I have the Warhammer, FFH, FF & my Modmod, RIFE & my Modmod, PLanetfall, Fury Road & all the BTS ones installed atm. Imagine the game with all of them loaded, or having to install each mod before you play a different one.
* Conquest: Unfortunately this is NOT a conquest victory but a Regicide one. Diplomatic: Get an Alliance with every other surviving major Civ, which is either easy or impossible atm. Master Quest: Run to 5 Different locations and kill some guys & back again, as hard as it sounds. Spell of Making: actually is more of a research victory atm.
The Tile & Particle Labs actually seem kinda neat, but when is stupidly hard to get what you've made into the game its a big let-down.
Adding to that is the game itself just lacks depth, its full of "Cool Ideas" but none of them are really complete. The best example of this is the minor Civs; just like CiV Elemental has a group of races that don't compete to win the game. However in E these guys do NOTHING, they don't even build units, other than provide free xp & a crappy city once conquered.
Haha, well said. It's a little silly that a game that was hyped on the promise of "massive modding support" should be in such a state. And even when the modding access is all opened up as they intend it to be, it still won't even be half as moddable as Civ4. Plus, the number of things that are hard-coded, or just plain inaccessible... I can't imagine why they would engineer things that way in the first place.
Edit: Needless to say, the mod I was planning to make for Elemental is now going to be for Civ5 instead. The later release date means I've had more time to work on my design docs. (Damn you, Europe, for making the wait even longer.
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