Elemental: War of Magic (Stardock's fantasy game) announced!

Definitely an exciting project. At one point I offered to create the back story / mythology for this game but Brad didn't take me up on it. I know Brad likes Fall from Heaven and there is a quote floating around someplace from Brad about Civ4's popular fantasy mod (or something like that).

I exchanged a few posts with him this morning about it and asked some questions. All of his answers made me even more excited about the game. I asked about how he address the steamroll issue (tbs games tend to turn into: build an army for the first half, roll over your opponents for the second half, repeat ad naseum). This was his response:

Brad Wardell said:
The mechanics in Elemental are a bit different than the typical 4X game because even in terms of warfare, there are very different paths. For instance, Player A may have a huge army ready to steamroll but Player B may have an incredibly powerful sovereign who can wipe out vast armies and Player C may have built up an incredible well of mana that can be used to decimate vast swaths of the world and all three of these things could come together at once based on which path players take and of course all 3 could lose to Player D who wins through the quest victory condition if they're not careful.

But I think the most interesting thing Brad mentioned about the game was that they are planning to release a 64bit version of the game (to run on 64bit windows). I didn't really understand why that was such a cool until he mentioned map sizes. With the 64 bit version he says they will be able to support "ridicuously large" worlds. That thought is amazing!
 
well. they definitely found some inspiration in FfH´s story, no?
 
well. they definitely found some inspiration in FfH´s story, no?

I don't know. To be honest there are so many things that both games draw out of a common genre of fantasy games started back with MoM that its impossible to say one inspired any other (except that MoM inspired a lot of everything).

If there is anything in FfH that helped Brad or the guys at Stardock make Elemental the tinest bit better then more power to them. But, games are so broad and FfH in particular covers so much of the TBS fantasy game mechanics that its going to be hard not to share some common themes with it.

FfH certainly shares/borrows mechanics from a ton of other games. Thats just the nature of game making.
 
I'll probably take a pass on this. I hated Stardock's attempt at turn based strategy set in space, and I don't see a reason to think they'll improve from moving to a fantasy world.
 
Hrmm I was looking forward to this (I liked Galactic Civilizations.. for the most part) but after looking at those screenshots.... ugh. I hate that art style, makes me think that you'll have units/art with googly eyes and goofy expressions. I want a serious fantasy game. I guess you get to keep taking my money, Kael!
 
Hrmm I was looking forward to this (I liked Galactic Civilizations.. for the most part) but after looking at those screenshots.... ugh. I hate that art style, makes me think that you'll have units/art with googly eyes and goofy expressions. I want a serious fantasy game. I guess you get to keep taking my money, Kael!

Half priced, just for you. :goodjob:
 
Hrmm I was looking forward to this (I liked Galactic Civilizations.. for the most part) but after looking at those screenshots.... ugh. I hate that art style, makes me think that you'll have units/art with googly eyes and goofy expressions. I want a serious fantasy game. I guess you get to keep taking my money, Kael!

Yes, everyone knows it's impossible for anything that's colorful to be serious in any way, it's simply impossible.

Needs moar brown, grey, and bloom pls.
 
Hey, brown is real. :)

In all seriousness, GalCiv II is the reason I'm playing FfH today. That game got me re-hooked on tbs games (hadn't played any since Civ II when I was a kid), which led to me getting Civ4 and... things went downhill from there. :p On top of that, I have always been a huge fan of Stardock as a company. I was part of the beta for Twilight of the Arnor and had a really good experience with it; it was shocking for me to have a game company actually listen to and implement fan ideas.

So I am quite psyched by this, and will probably take a closer look at it. Maybe it will finally cure me of my FfH addiction (Not likely :D ).
 
I agree, the colors are two bright and happy. I loved Stardocks Sins of a Solar Empire, but that had much better graphics, and in turn looked more realistic. I hope they add realistic rules to the magic. The Eragon books had half-decent rules for magic. Personaly, I feel one of the fantasy books by Fred Saberhagen had one of the best magic systems.

Sorry for going OT.
 
I'm not a big fan of the graphics because it looks too cartoony. I absolutely love Sins of a Solar Empire, ESPECIALLY when the highest level graphics are thrown in (Glad my desktop can run those <3), so that's even more disappointing. Keep in mind, though, that they're still a year or so away from release, I'm sure, and that the main concern for the time being is the game system, not the look. As such, there's a good chance that the graphics quality it will use will be implemented later, if it's any different.

Honestly, if I were making games myself, I'd go with quick and easy graphics early on to get all the other stuff working. Besides, that could be what they use for the lowest quality setting. ^_~
 
I must agree with Monkeyfinger : galactic civ is absolutely zero regarding military strategy, the tech path is the same for everyone (but...wait... I could buy two extensions to have at last a tech tree just inferior to MOO2 !(and another base game, 'cause I have a french version, boo me)). I had more fun with the civ 4 space mod. I'll skip stardock games like I do skip paradox one's .
 
I think it looks fine graphically but I'm anxious since both GalCivs and SotS weren't very good games. Maybe it will turn out to be a sleeper hit though, stranger things have happened.

Edit: Whoah now, who can hate paradox games? They're amazing (the ones that they produce and not just publish). :)
 
I can't remenber the last time I finished a paradox game (any of them), for a reason : BUGS : it seems there is some sort of infestation. All of their games are flawed, from the first release to the last patch. And now, they don't issue patches for their games past the moment they release an extension. So, they made me dream with awesome concepts, and then shattered these dreams with aggressive commercial politics and pure incompetence. I cannot think of a strategy game more buggy than EU 1&2. I won't buy any of their games ever, I've lost enougth money on unfinished business.
 
Yes, HoI, Victoria, EU3, CK, all brilliant.

EDIT: Well when I started playing all games were already fully patched and I can't say I encountered any issues.
 
I love both Stardock and Paradox. CK:DV is one of my all time favorite, although EU:Rome has been pretty disappointing. I think GalCiv2 is one of the best games ever made.
 
Yes, everyone knows it's impossible for anything that's colorful to be serious in any way, it's simply impossible.

Needs moar brown, grey, and bloom pls.

woah woah woah.... I didn't say anything about color. World of Warcraft uses a very bright color scheme but I'm totally fine with that because the art direction is strong. The art style for War of Magic reminds me of those goofy xbox arcade games or some web game for kids. Trees that are little spheres with gradients on them? Please. Thats just lazy.
 
I'll probably take a pass on this. I hated Stardock's attempt at turn based strategy set in space, and I don't see a reason to think they'll improve from moving to a fantasy world.

couldn't agree more. I am on the Civ fanatics forum because I couldn't care less of Stardock and its strategic games. Of all companies that entered the strategy game world (turn based or not) they did the worse job in my book. They even released their most famous game without MP support with the cheap excuse that the strategy genre players don't multiplay... I would have rather shut up or made up a decent excuse.
 
I'm looking forward to this. For years I've wanted a RPG that let you make a real impact. Usurp the king, fund the kingdom with the returns from your dungeon-crawling, use your character to lead attacks on your neighbors and conquer everything. This just seems to be approaching it from the other side.

As far as the graphics go, meh. They've never been a big concern for me. I play Dwarf Fortress every so often and it's text-based, used to MUD, and still dust off my old MoM once in a while. Dated or odd graphics are fine if they let them make those absolutely huge worlds.

Regarding multi-player in their previous games. I can sort of see why they went without. TBS is fun in multiplayer but it does seem the bulk is played SP. Trying to balance a game for both multiplayer/PvP and singleplayer/PvE is a nightmare no matter what genre it's in. Just look at WoW and how the arenas have caused changes that have major effects in raids. And multiplayer balance is a pain no matter what. You can have a dominant strategy for 2 months that suddenly becomes garbage without any changes in the game, just people changing their play. That said, I don't know why they didn't just include it with a clear message that it's not their primary focus and won't be as good. Better a weak MP than none at all.

I'm really wondering how they're planning to pull off the variations in game length they've talked about though. One evening or 3 years.. Making a tech tree so giant that the 3-year game has research options means the one-evening game will see almost nothing of the game. Make it possible to use most of the tree in the one-evening game leaves the 3-year player researching Future Tech 457. Making everything take 500 times as long for the 3-year game is incredibly boring.
 
Well if by future tech 457 my units were any stronger than my less advanced rivals, I'd be happy. (That's a hint FfH team.)
 
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