Elemental Coming Soon!!

[Pickly]

Seems the release version is finally working for me. Time to figure out the game so I can get some modding going.

 

[tesb]

i will reserve judgment until the release version tomorrow, but i am quite skeptical. i played the 1.0 version all day and the game needs a lot of polish imho. as of now the 1.0 prerelease version feels like a beta (not a real stardock beta but a regular promotion beta, like dawn of war 2 beta etc.)

 

[Morlark]

the game needs a lot of polish imho.

This is absolutely true. I'm finding the gameplay to be fantastically great fun, but the horrible UI just lets it down in so many ways. And these are problems that were reported from as early as Beta 1. Worse still, these things will probably not be fixed for a while, because are more pressing gameplay issues and, perhaps more unforgivably, a few lingering crash bugs that still need to fixed first.

Just so it's clear that I'm not trying to slam the game, it is absolutely huge amounts of fun. But it's fun that you have to work for, which isn't always the best kind of fun.

 

[LDiCesare]

at Caesar,

The map editor and tile editor that I had access to was rather user friendly, whether or not they were the same editors you used I cannot say.

I don't care for the tile editor. One of the first things I did was check the (cloth map only' checkbox.
The map editor (realease version, 1.01) is not user friendly. You must read in some thread that numpad + is needed to change brush size. Key which is not available on all notebooks, so it's not usable by everyone. Brush shape is a circle no matter what. You can't use a brussh by dragging but must click-clikc-click-click.
Serious improvements to speed have been made since the beta, however.
How come there is a 'tactical land' and a 'land' in the same menu when you're drawing a strategic map is a mystery.
Rivers can't merge nor fork.
Overall, it's pretty usable for small maps. For big maps, it's long and tedious to use.

As far as I have heard, you can create new AIs using almost pure XML.

Yes, but only insofar as the developpers thought of exposing the tags that you need.
For the moment, I haven't located anything usable.

As far as I have heard, there will be mapscripting available- it just won't be released on launch

DEFINITELY show me a link. All answers to this topic on the forums by Frogboy have always ended up in 'maybe'. I strongly doubt they planned to release mapscripting. They might realise how wrong they were given the backlash due to their poor random maps now, though.

As far as patches go ... no one knows patch notes.

Then why did you announce the future patches content if you didn't know them?

I have heard interest in improving AI for many years to come,

Yes, definitely. I trust Stardock to do this and eventually reach a good ai.

and I have also heard the basic concepts that the Expansion packs are going to be based around.

Basically Naval Combat and Item Crafting are guaranteed in the future. (w/ expansion(s))

Sources?

Apparently if you buy the book "Destiny's Embers" you get access to another campaign.

I'm not going to buy that book unless I read reviews from book, not game, reviewers...

The game as it is is still released several months early. It lacks stability, polish, balance and ai. There are also several ui issues.

 

[Gaminic]

You may be confusing 2 things. Fall from Heaven 2 is a Civ4 mod that is free. Elemental is the new turn based fantasy game by Stardock. They are both turn based fantasy games which is why so many FfH fans are excited to try Elemental.

Personally I've stayed out of the Elemental beta just so I can take it all in fresh this weekend when I grab a copy. I can't wait!

Oh, thanks for the clarification. The screenshots and the fact that it's possed in the FfH Civ4 mods subforum got me believing it was another fantasy mod. My bad!

 

[Morlark]

Yes, but only insofar as the developpers thought of exposing the tags that you need.
For the moment, I haven't located anything usable.

The latest dev post says that they'll be opening up the AI to Python after Frogboy comes back from his sabbatical, which he's starting in October and will last for a month or two.

You can only change the weightings for the existing AI via XML, which a lot of the dev posts like to talk up when they mention custom AI, but as you say that's really not the same thing at all.

DEFINITELY show me a link. All answers to this topic on the forums by Frogboy have always ended up in 'maybe'. I strongly doubt they planned to release mapscripting. They might realise how wrong they were given the backlash due to their poor random maps now, though.

Yeah, I really hope they add in mapscripting, but I'm pretty sure they don't plan to at the moment. The game does currently have a fractal mapscript built in, but it can only be accessed by deleting the seed maps from the data directory. It's also not very good, which is why they disabled it.

I never heard of C++ modding for Elemental. Can you provide sources?

Tasunke is just flat out wrong there. They've never once even mentioned opening up the C++. I did once ask if they intended to, in a thread in which Frogboy was answering questions, but I never got an answer. (Although most questions in that thread didn't get answered, so he wasn't deliberately ignoring it or anything.)

 

[Tholal]

I pre-ordered this long ago to be part of the beta testing, but it was never stable until the last few weeks (and then I was moving so I didn't have much time to play). But in what I did play, I wasn't overly impressed. The game feels really awkward and clutzy, like they threw too much into the frying pan without making sure that everything made sense, was useful and intuitive and added to the gameplay rather than simply creating MORE.

 

[tesb]

well it is fun game for a casual gamer, but as a fan of many 4x games it has so much wasted potential. with some things i can't even wrap my head around how things even got in the game in this state, mainly the magic system:
how can anybody design such a system (i am mainly talking about the sheer randomness of spelldamage)?

as of now it is more a pain to play, but knowing stardock this game will get great after a couple of months. i really wished they would have delayed the beta back to February so we could get a really great and polished game.


i played quite a lot of games and the only one that was quite fun was a game as an empire with 2 kingdoms around me immediately starting war against me. i researched diplomacy first to get darklings (awesome idea for the diplomacy path) while my melee sovereign crushed everything in his path getting me the important money from battles. i build up my empire had an insane one-mam-army-sovereign (basically all my economy went into him) but then the terrible ai strikes:
they send their sovereign with an army into my territory to attack my cities, i teleported in and since their sovereign died in my territory the game was over for them, although they both had quite a significant realm. (imho sovereign should never leave the cities, let the kids do the stuff)

i guess i will play the game for some more days and than go back to wildmana modding. the most annoying thing by far are the out of memory crashes though. the sounds stops playing after a while and i only get ambient noises and after that the game usually crashes. restarting and reloading does the trick i guess there is still some memory leak around


when they fix the memory issue, the magic system and rebalance the champions (they don't scale well, especially their hp) the game will be very good. than it will be mostly content and minor rebalancing.

 

[Tasunke]

ah, I apologize for the C++ oversight. Hopefully they will eventually open up C++ though.

As the game stands, its rather fun, although I would suggest for newcomers to wait till next week to purchase the game (as that is when multiplayer will be enabled, and the UI should be more user-friendly by then too)

At some point in the future (hopefully by same time next year) I'd like to tweak the way tactical battles play out, to my own personal preferences.

Overall the game is still quite addictive, and I personally haven't had any crash issues (although I know a few still exist).

 

[DirtyFinger]

considering how simplistic the graphics are, the game is - or rather becomes - incredibly slow.
civ5 is fast even on huge maps - as long as you don't push the next-turn button.
elemental slows down to a crawl in less than a 100 turns on a small/medium map, making simple unit movement a stop-motion adventure. probably just memory leaks, though, not an inherent fault of the engine.

the interface is stylistically interesting, although in too many places ergonomically flawed. or just stupidly designed.
for example: your party visits a trader to buy new equipment for your guys (which is kinda cool for a civ-style game). you get a long, unsorted list of items you can buy. no categories whatsoever, which is especially puzzling since the inventory screen does have categories.
When in the shop you have no way of looking at the stuff your party members have currently equipped, which is even more puzzling since you can see what equipment they have in their inventory.
And to top it all: Your party doesn't have a shared inventory screen, so that if you want to give your old stuff to another hero, you have to open a cumbersome trade-window where you have to cycle through your nearby heroes until you find those two that have things to share. Even the original Master of Magic had more comfortable inventory management!

There are many more such design flaws around that prevent the game from becoming a truly enjoyable game, even though it shows promise: It could be a good mix of Master of Magic and Civilization with RPG features.

But considering that Stardock is known for Windows Blinds and other UI stuff you'd expect them to show a bit more appreciation for ergonomics and usability.

[Addendum]:
I nearly forgot about tactical combat. That's quite similar to MoM, actually. It offers nearly as much features as MoM did, including the inability to decide beforehand how to place your units. The game is determined to put my strongest heroes safely in the back, right behind the archers, mages and level 1 scouts.
Apart from that it's quite ok ... if the attack animations wouldn't be so slow (enjoy a two second pause for an archer to shoot his arrow) and if the enemy would lose his hitpoints after the attack hits ... and not before.

This game is a bug ridden beta release, even though it is quite enjoyable, admittedly.
But remember how Frogboy (Stardock CEO and lead designer, I think) flounced his gigantic beta-phase with pre-order customers being invited? Shouldn't there have been some feedback to the obvious design flaws, at least, before inflicting this game on an unsuspecting audience?

Sad, especially since the game is quite creative and innovative in other areas.

 

[tesb]

I was in the beta and the beta was, what most would call, an alpha version. it would just not work. you could only play some turns and then it will crash. many features were taken out or only enabled one at a time. there were also many threads about the ui and a common response was: don't worry it will be totally different in the release.

this game has so much potential, yet it fails so miserably on all accounts my heart bleeds. my only solace is that it is stardock behind the game. meaning in a couple of months it will actually be quite good. and in a couple of years it will probably be one of the best 4x fantasy strategy games.

 

[Tholal]

The beta was completely unplayable for me until a couple of weeks before release.

 

[Tasunke]

I was in the beta and the beta was, what most would call, an alpha version. it would just not work. you could only play some turns and then it will crash. many features were taken out or only enabled one at a time. there were also many threads about the ui and a common response was: don't worry it will be totally different in the release.

this game has so much potential, yet it fails so miserably on all accounts my heart bleeds. my only solace is that it is stardock behind the game. meaning in a couple of months it will actually be quite good. and in a couple of years it will probably be one of the best 4x fantasy strategy games.

hehe, probably so.

 

[travathian]

Between this and the notes on various review sites I think I'll definitely wait til this hits the discount bin, and hopefully about a dozen more patches.

edit: Terribly disappointing too cause I was really looking forward to this. Sad to hear that Stardock's new form of DRM consists of releasing an unfinished game and hoping that the pirates will actually pay for the game in order to get updates that are required to complete and unfinished pile of crap. Too bad they can easily pirate those as well.

 

[Valkrionn]

Pretty much the same. Were it free, I would play it. However, I would never pay for a game with this many issues. Especially when it had such a long Beta.

Doubly so with Civ5 around the corner.

 

[tesb]

edit: Terribly disappointing too cause I was really looking forward to this. Sad to hear that Stardock's new form of DRM consists of releasing an unfinished game and hoping that the pirates will actually pay for the game in order to get updates that are required to complete and unfinished pile of crap. Too bad they can easily pirate those as well.

they had a choice to release it in august or in february (due to how retailers work). brad just thought they could make to august. i think it was simply a huge miscalculation on his part, not some evil drm scheme. that you have to use impulse for updates is a long standing tradition for stardock. keep in mind you do not have to have impulse installed, like steam, you can download and patch the game with it, uninstall impulse and never use impulse again.

Doubly so with Civ5 around the corner.

yes, but civ5 is just an other civ there is really nothing that much special about it imho. (the hex tiles and combat are minor changes to me)
where as elemental has a lot more stuff fitting for an fantasy 4x game.

 

[Valkrionn]

they had a choice to release it in august or in february (due to how retailers work). brad just thought they could make to august. i think it was simply a huge miscalculation on his part, not some evil drm scheme. that you have to use impulse for updates is a long standing tradition for stardock. keep in mind you do not have to have impulse installed, like steam, you can download and patch the game with it, uninstall impulse and never use impulse again.


yes, but civ5 is just an other civ there is really nothing that much special about it imho. (the hex tiles and combat are minor changes to me)
where as elemental has a lot more stuff fitting for an fantasy 4x game.

Eh. Civ5 has other mechanics that interest me.

Elemental just seems to try to cram too many features into a 4x game for my taste.

 

[Jarrema]

Elemental just seems to try to cram too many features into a 4x game for my taste.

It is my opinion also.
Features included in Elemental sounds very interesting, but there is too many of them. SOME new, interesting, working as intended, balanced etc. features is goood. But too many = bad playing experience
(note that I did not actually play Elemental, so my opinion could be biased)

 

[calmon]

As a elemental player i can add:

the game concept i pretty good! I had the feeling of a new and better Master of Magic and a lot of things works fine to me.

BUT in moment the game lacks on a lot of bugs and a bad AI. Brad will have to improve the AI after his vacation a lot! Too many exploits and too stupid opponents (on highest difficult level!) destroys the fun for me completely. Also a lot of balance and performance problems inside the game.

So be not in hurry purchasing the game, but have it on your list. I'm sure, it will be a really good game in ~3-9 month!

 

[Valkrionn]

Then they should have released it in ~3-9 months.