Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I'm not that confident about modding.
I'm used to modding games like Call to Power 2 and Civ IV, so I'm a bit spoiled, but the lack of a programming language (python was touted early on) will certainly hurt. Modding the user interface for instance doesn't seem possible, nor is modding a map script. It will be possible to mod new races, techs, and probably spells and effects, though, but I still think EWOM modding will fall short of my initial expectations.

I think there are 2 main issues in the beta which make the game unenjoyable/unplayable:
-Brain dead AI. I'm quite confident there, as Brad Wardell will take his time, but turn it into something challengin. Unfortunately, this may be at the cost of gameplay/variability/breadth of strategies available.
-Lack of army management UI. It's not possible to group 2 units outside cities and have them work as a single army. This has been the case from the first beta, and not fixed yet. I hope they change it, or make sure it can work seemlessly if it's supposed to work, but as it stands, this problem alone would make the game unplayable.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

This guy nailed it. I would only add that I think Elemental WILL be a good game a year or so from now. If they only give us XML for modding, I am going to be PISSED.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

First off, someone asked about Distant Worlds. Grab it!!! Best 4X space game ever made and getting better and better with each patch.

Regarding Elemental, I still hold high hopes for the game at release but I certainly empathise with the comments through this thread. Couple of things need to be said though:

1. Brad, the MD of Stardock, is basically on the forums every day as FrogBoy giving feedback and sharing the development of the game. I have never seen this level of openness from a developer. Bloody brave to face up day after day to defend what he is doing. He mustn't have a soul because I would imagine this to be a soul destroying exercise.

2. The screenshots of the final game do look much better than the Beta. So the world looks to be fairly immersive. Jury still out on racial diversity and tactical battles.

3. Like many here I think the game will end up being great after it has gone through a few versions and mods. But I also really believe it will be very good on release next week. A few lucky individuals managed to get their copies early through an error with the passwording and they are reporting that the game is fantastic.

4. Modding is based around XML but there will also eventually be Python as well.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Can you provide some links? Good reviews would be very encouraging.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Here are some links to a couple of guys that downloaded it...

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-t...postcount=1920

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-t...postcount=1922

Not a lot of specifics but I'm heartened.

Also I felt very comfortable after reading the GameShark interview with the developer...
http://www.gameshark.com/features/74...ad-Wardell.htm

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

But the spell learning interface seems to be mostly the same as in beta, and it realy sucks.
I found the game more interesting to play only with the cloth map to be honest. the graphics hinder play more than they help, managing to make it hard to distinguish fluff (worthless rocks or scrubs) from gameplay element (ores or forests).

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Good find! Ironic that the guy got in trouble despite providing a pretty much glowing opinion of the game and the only data point which indicates that the game might not be a flop. You would think that they would want a counterpoint to all the negativity/disappointment going around.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I don't have a whole lot of faith in Stardock. GalCiv2 was (for me, anyway) unplayably buggy, even after fully patched (BSOD every single game, and very poor customer service/little help from the boards), and the bits I could play, were extremely and obviously (to the point of Stardock outright stating the fact) reminiscent in flavor to the Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien in space? Wha?

And trying to get the game to run on a brand new, cutting edge computer, was just more problem, since the vaunted "downloadable game" feature has been moved to an indecypherable/extremely difficult to use download site, with enough distracting advertizements on it to choke the Las Vegas strip.

Compounding that was the game's (entirely unwanted and, to me, rather distasteful) simplistic combat system (boiled down to, and again described as, paper-rock-scissors...in space!!!), and even more simplistic alignment system, ala early stoneage basic D&D. Frankly, both of those elements are the opposite of something I'd ever want in a science fiction game. I barely fathom the purpose of an alignment system in a fantasy game, as it is, and science fiction battles should be all about ever heightening levels of complexity.

Considering that they're basing Elemental on Master of Magic, another old as dirt game (although undeniably a beloved classic, and one of my favorite games), and looking back on their attempt at something comparable to Master of Orion, I'm extremely wary here. Nobody in their right mind should be trying to reinvent the so very worn fantasy wheel... Innovate or get out of the way. Coupled with the reports on their not easily accepting Beta feedback, it'll take a great deal of convincing before I shell out the cash for Elemental. I think I'd rather give the updated King's Bounty a try.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Save your money for IWs upcoming game. I do have faith in them since every single game they ever made was blessed with imagination and creativity and, most important, is fun to play.

Also, Disciples III is fun, as in aesthetically and musically pleasing while you cruise the campaign at 10% brain capacity during a hard day's evening.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I think that Gal Civ 2 its not an improvement over MOO2. In MOO2 you get complex battles and personal ship design that you actually witness and make some sense of.

In Gal Civ 2 you design your ship to get them in a "battle" wich is 2 battleships crashing against each other. One lives and one dies. Why would I care if it get laser beams or missile or a mix. You dont actually see the missiles and they dont make any difference.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

GalCiv 2 is clearly a different game, 4X in space does not have to be MoO2 spin off. Having said that, GalCiv 2 was kinda boring after a while, too abstract.

I liked the Space Empires series for the tactical battles. Somewhere on the net is a blow by blow account of a MASSIVE SE IV: Carrier Battles mod battle. Picture the biggest movie space battle with massive numbers of tiny fighters buzzing around the battleships, it must have taken the player hours just to do that one battle.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I would consider Gratuitous Space Battles an example of a well designed space combat system, though it is only that. Put that in with an economy, research, and all that and you would have a solid space opera 4x game.

Yes, its like the combat in Dom 3 as a stand-alone game.

Well, Elemental: War of Magic version 1.0 is on my pc and I feel it is not too shabby. Not too shabby indeed. I was concerned but now feel better about it, this game has really good potential to be another Dom 3, ie still kicking years after its release.

I must say that I have not played much of it yet (sleep takes precedent and I'm pooped after work) and I'm a gamer who is forgiving and patient. Having said this I have not seen bugs of any kind, so basically its a 1.0 version, it works, possibly has some non-game breaking "quirks" and has spelling mistakes (like Dom 3 :) ). I believe the engine will allow for some great gaming experiences, as it stands I have not played enough to say either way if it has solid replayability on release but I am happy with what I have seen.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Doo, now that you have 1.0 can you relate to some of the questions below:
Do the races/nations feel unique and interesting?
Is the spell system interesting?
Is tactical battle interesting?
Are the races balanced by way of being more or less a copy of each other?

and bonus Q
Will Elemental ever support MP?

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

From what I can see of the game now, I'd say "no" to most of your first questions, whereby I found the spell system to be somewhat interesting (if not as interesting as Dom3's), and "yes" to the last question. To disambiguate:
- No
- Somewhat
- No
- Yes

Bonus Question: Yes. (It should support MP now, but I havent played that yet). (What's the prize for the bonus Q? :D)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

you get the first copy of a game of your choice from the list below:
a- MOM II
b- Dominions IV
c- IW's secret game

That's the gaming industry's best kept secret, they not only exist and enjoyed by many (albeit at the cost of signing an NDA), they are also given as prizes for bonus questions (sadly making their MP community somewhat small) ;)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

MoM II has existed in many forms since MoM 1.
Some have reached being playable, but none have reached distribution form that I know of. Most of them are good starts that get destroyed by an effort to make them multiplayer.

Dom IV is still in discussion mode as I understand it. (note that it is not being done by Illwinter)

IW's secret game is only alpha as far as I know and their alpha's tend to require a working knowledge of Finnish which I dont have.

You forgot to mention :

Space Empires Plus, one of which is back to looking for programmers and the other is nearing alpha (neither done by Malfador)

VGA Planets IV which has become overdeveloped for release

Malfador's latest project World Supremacy which is in Apha

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

There is a lot of feedback, most of it pointing to the game being "fun but unpolished".

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391385

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391443
http://forums.elementalgame.com/391433
(and many more)

Some of the more disturbing stuff is that the "random" maps are not random. The goodies huts are random but you always get some starting resources nearby like fertile land. However the land mass is seeded, meaning that the ocean, mountains, forests, etc. are all static. Kind of takes the wind out of exploration.

Also the tactical combat (which is the biggest draw for me personally) is disabled in multiplayer. It still might be a fun single player game (with time) but I can't see it replacing Dominions.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

What? Where? How? When? Who? (And possibly some other one-word questions too.) This is new info, right? Haven't heard anything about it before.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

This is much like Civ IV. The default random map generators put a lot of additional resources near the player's starting location.

By seeded, you mean a same seed gives the same result, not that it's always the same seed? Please?

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Yes, the same seed will give an identical land mass, just unique goodie huts and resources and neutral monsters, etc. In the current version there are about...15 seeds across all 4 map sizes? Something very small. There is of course the promise of "dozens" of map seeds coming, but still that's not quite random. To equate it to dominions, it's like having dozens of pre-set maps (Parganos, Silent Seas, etc.) but with random magic sites. I would not call that random map generation, and I don't think any Dominions player would either.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Space Empires: Battle for Supremacy

http://www.mpogd.com/news/?ID=6379

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Unless you can give at least one link to an example of this I'm going to assume you're making this up.

You mean we're sometimes whining about how much we'd like it made? I wouldn't call that "discussion mode"

They're Swedish, like me. Not finnish, completely different languages. So if you have the slightest idea where I could use my extraordinary linguistic skills to find out more on the alpha I'd be more than happy to translate for you. Or perhaps the problem is rather the whole "secret" thing? You know, them not wanting anyone, including you, to know about it.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

My first impression of Elemental is that it's poor man's Civ without any soul with artists being paid in non-alcoholic beer - sovereign and unit arts are just disgusting. Nations are a joke. UI is a joke. Economy seems bland. I will play a bit more, but so far I don't like it at all.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

The truest heir to Master of Magic that I've ever played has been Lords of Magic: Special Edition.

Not an exact copy ofcourse, but definitely similar beyond mere reminiscence. And it quite possibly
has the most sheerly beautiful (map) scenery porn in any game, ever. It's very much like playing on
some centuries old Italian master's oilpaint landscape.

The game itself is fun, and the (many) elementally derived Nations play differently, because they are different. This does affect the balance a bit, unfortunately, but not horribly so, and anyway, you can play every single Nation, ranging from the very benign to the very evil.

The focus is on heroes, which are generally incorporated very well into the game. It's a little bit like Warcraft 3 in that aspect, but to my mind, the incorporation seems even a little bit smoother in terms of the gameplay, considering LoM:SE is years older. Storywise, there isn't much, ofcourse, but the game lends itself well to making up your own story, as you go along.

The AI is also not great, and it's a fairly easy game to play, and beat (perhaps a little too much so),
but there's multiplayer support, and from what I've heard (I haven't tried it), it isn't awful. I couldn't find an item editor, though, and I don't believe the game itself has very powerful modding tools.

Even if not terribly challenging, games are long and feel suitably epic, atleast in a "better than average saturday morning fantasy b movie" kind of way (think "Krull", "Beastmaster", "Hawk the Slayer" etc. but with better special effects and slightly more coherant story.), so it's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon actually enjoying a game experience, rather than fighting for survival.

The nicest part is, I got my copy for less than 10$, and that was years ago. Unfortunately, for everyone else, it's currently around $45 at Amazon. Worth it, though, in my opinion.

Does the game have a personality? Yes, and a fairly well-adjusted one at that, I think.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Any that are being done semi-professionally I dont care to give you. And tho I gave up on most of them but if you put Master of Magic into a search on sites like SourceForge you can easily find large projects in various stages of completion. Feel free to join any you wish. But like I said, most tend to start off good then try to go MP and fall apart. Im still hoping for one that just completes the working-version stage before going off topic (come to think of it, isnt Elemental itself an example of that? So why did you ask?)

Actually speaking of SourceForge and any of the other Open Source or Cloud Project sites...
Anyone here who is interested in getting in as a programmer, graphics, sound, or just general idea-discussion; take any old game that you really liked and do a search of project sites like these. If you loved it then chances are that someone else did also. There are many projects trying to resurrect old classics.

Thats funny. I thought that Dom3Mods had one. :)
Most of the ones I was thinking of the discussion is in IRC. Of course, I tend to be less of a cheerleader than a naysayer. And I wouldnt say that any have reached any serious levels. In fact, until at LEAST an alpha playable version exists I dont bother contacting most projects.


No I dont think so. I really dont picture you in the alpha group.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Pros and Cons. There are times that I wish the mapgen in Dom3 would take a seed.

There is usually a seed. You just dont always get access to it. Unless it randomly reseeds in mid generation its the same whether you know there is a seed or not. Creating a true random in programming languages is a history subject all its own.

And a seed generally means at least 65535 options. Thats alot of maps.

If properly used a seeded generator can create a map hundreds of times larger than other games without adding to the size of the game, cpu load, or memory use.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

To be honest I don't consider Sourceforge and similar projects to be successors in any tangible way. If you don't own the intellectual rights to the project, you can't make the sequel. You can certainly make something, but when everyone is a volunteer the odds of any project going all the way to completion go way down.

As far as the seeds go, I do understand how they are supposed to work. However, the way Stardock talked about them it seems like only certain seeds have valid resources surrounding the starting areas. Since not all seeds are valid, we have to rely on them to provide them for us. Technically you can delete the seed altogether and create a totally random map, or use a manual brute force attack to generate all maps and then manually check which ones work for you. I think that's only for people who want to play Elemental: War of Boredom.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

When you've got a game so old, and so influential, as the "Master of..." games, the idea of making a true sequel at this so very late date is a dubious fantasy, at best. I'm not certain that would even be very desireable.

It's pretty easy to list the things we (plural) liked about MoM, and create a game that utilizes those ideas, while discarding the body of outdated "stuff" that 20 years of programming has improved on.

For that matter, I suspect it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to just mod the latest version of Civilization into a more or less MoM clone, if all you want is a fairly straight copy.

Personally, my wish is for a turn based strategy game that was deeply generic, and that let you create units/structures, and harvest resources, right from the ground up, in a Spore-like fashion, maybe with some user-defineable universal physics, along the lines of a user-created tech and resource tree--discarding the trappings, and inherant limitations of "fantasy/science fiction/historical" strategy games. With a deep and broad enough level of gameplay, you could end up with something with a whole lot more replayability than any given rehash.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I fully agree. In fact, I mentioned it in another thread where they were discussing how great games would be if the devs listened to the community. Im not against it. But everything has its pros and cons. Open projects tend to show the other side of that argument at a high percentage.

But it still makes a good hunting ground. Sometimes one of them will actually get to a working alpha. They are often just messing around with it but once it gets there you can talk to them about going legit. Sometimes it involves giving up the games working name for a completely new one and dropping some other too-close-to-hide characteristics of the old game but if they want to continue onward to a marketable product they can.

But like I say, until they have a working playable alpha its usually not worth talking to them. 90% of them fall out before doing any real code.

Thats sucks. Ive gotten used to developers not making good use of seeds but that sounds like not even making average use of it. On the other hand, changing out the seed-feed for a generator is something that can easily be done at the last minute so maybe its just that way now for testing purposes (I hope). Well Brads fame has always been AI, not maps.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I kinda suspect that Stardock would like to have put more things in at release but didn't have the time and it is good enough as a release version. I suspect a lot of crinkles will be ironed out over time.

You can see the Stardock team sitting around a table saying:

"Only some seeds give good starting resources, a bad seed effectively screws the game."

"Oh poo...."

"Lets release it on schedule and run with it, more maps can be added over time. It will fly."

And thats ok by me.

*edit* Immediately after writing this I went to the Stardock Elemental forum and guess what, Version 1.01 released with more random seed maps :)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I would buy Elemental if it had hotseat. As it stands now I will pass on that game.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Gandalf: Stardock gives good AI, but consider that it's AI in GalCiv is operating in a really simple combat environment.

That's always seemed a little suspect to me...

It feels like, once you've got the AI performing well in terms of overall strategy, that it shouldn't be to huge of a step to code in some kind of tactical framework that can go beyond "paper-rock-scissors".

People have been designing competitive chess games for well over a decade, that are able to outperform genius-level human players (1997: Deep Blue vs Kasparov, 1998: Rebel 10 vs Viswanathan Anand etc.), so why successfully create an AI that can perform on a macro-scale, but then not even make the attempt at one that can compete in a deep microgame? It's a letdown, in retrospect.

Another letdown is that the Dreadlords (the big bad Balrog-types) are neither capable of "learning" (they never adapt new weapons or defenses to the tactics of others), nor of fully operating on the grand strategy level (they don't take new planets), so that, to me, is a major failure of the AI towards giving the single player (which this style of AI seems to have been adopted for the benefit of--obviously, human players wouldn't require these kinds of handicaps), the ultimate challenge of trying to overcome an enemy that is not only strong, but in some fashion, smart.

It's a perpetuation of a tired old cliche: that of the supervillain who exists only to wait around for the plucky heroes to knock him off his dark throne. Once again, Tolkien in space. And in this case, there's not even the excuse of a Barad-Dur for the villain to be tied to, or a Cracks of Doom/Ring of Power weakness.

In GalCiv, Sauron has a spaceship.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Stardock's handling of maps is very bad. They've been told to open map scripting to modders, who proved with Civ IV that they can do it.
No, they preferred to do it themselves. Now they have a big map generator, that is slow, that has to pick bits of here and there because they can't think of a non-fractal random map or can't create good fractal random maps and make them fast...

As for the ai, it will be decent enough given time, but right now, the Gold version is just worthy of a beta.
And I concur that Stardock games had good ai's because of simple rules.
Now, it's much harder with Elemental, which has way more varied rules, and in which many tricks will come, including unforeseen ones I believe, like self-hasting fire giants.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Is there anything interesting in Elemental that would make you want to stick longer to it?

And some questions:

1. How to deal with Golems? They pretty much insta-kill any armies.
2. Or maybe auto-resolve comabts sucks so bad that with 10x higher attack you lose anyway?
3. Is there any hard limit for tiles for my cities? OR any pattern? Some of my cities have same size, but 2x less tiles...
4. Can I make more adventurers or do I have to run like crazy with my sovereign to check all huts taht pop up everywhere?
5. Do games take hundreds of turns, or is it just me?
6. What's the strongest sovereign? So far it looks like the one starting with 2 units just owns everything, as he can amass insane amount of gold etc from monsters and treasures. what's +1 gold per turn if you can find 200 gold chests?

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

3. You are limited to 50 tiles per city. If you put a resource inside your city (gold mine, etc.) that takes up 4 tiles. But it is put behind the city walls, so there's a tactical decision between freeing up 4 tiles and preventing bandits from burning down your gold mine.

6. Statistically speaking, some of the pre-made sovereigns are unbelievably powerful compared to the custom sovereigns. A few have more than 50 points placed in stats alone, and then on top of that they have abilities and equipment. The only advantage of a custom sovereign is the stacking of ridiculous bonuses, like getting all the +movement bonuses and the ability that allows all units to move at the same speed as the soverign (or something like that).

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I thought these supercomputers used a brute force AI, that they simply run play out millions of optional moves and where they lead and then pick the best.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Good potential when there's an ai, a better ui in places, and some more balance. hopefully good modding capability too.

You mean fire giants, stone giants, etc? Yes, they kill everything. Best counter: Summon one of your own. Next: You need lots of attack to get past their armor, so need good weapons and lots of units grouped together. So buy a company of soldiers equipped with longsword or heavy warhammers or the like. Just make sure to have many individuals in the unit, each of them dishing out lots of damage.
Alternately, accumulate insane intelligence on your sovereign and cast some spell at it, particularly if you own the shards that go with the spell.
I wouldn't trust auto resolve except maybe for 1 on 1 fights. The tactical ai is so bad that playing by hand means you'll win evenly matched fights easily so...
You can hire adventurers and the like. Some of them seem to keep roaming the map even late game.
They do for me too. But then I use a magician sovereign, she casts spells, and if it takes 20 turns for her mana to refill, the game drags just because of that.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Can anyone who already played it give a review of the tactical battles? For me, boring tactical combat is a complete dealbreaker. GalCiv 2 was promising until the first fight showed that braindead rock-paper-scissors scheme that had going. There's a reason i always come back to playing MOO3 when i'm in the mood for space 4X. :D
Well, SEIV is nice too.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I can write a good review in around 48 hours time, so far I have not committed much time to playing it because after work I'm pooped. Friday night I intend to have an epic 6 hour marathon, Saturday morning I'll give you a fair and proper rundown of the game.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

There is nothing "tactical" about the tactical battles. Basically all your guys are on a grid, all their guys are on a grid. There are no obstacles or impassable tiles to create choke points or anything like that. Most of your spells are single target, infinite range, deals 1 to X damage where X = your INT. Melee attacks deal 1 to X damage where X is your attack rating. Defense reduces damage ranging from 1 to X where X is your defense rating.

The wide number ranges make it hard to guarantee that any given attack will result in a kill, and it's especially frustrating when your spells roll low because you only get back 1 mana per game turn. So blowing 10 MP in a fight is rarely worth the price.

When you research warfare tech you can make groups of units that all stack together on the same square. Instead of 4/6/8 guys with individual stats, their stats are merely added together. So basically, 4 peasants = jaguar warrior, 4 axemen = niefel jarl, 4 knights = prince of death. It's pretty crazy. You spend all this time leveling up your sovereign so that he has 40 HP and a whopping 20 attack, and then a couple turns later you can just crank out unlimited numbers of 150HP 300 attack units in all your cities.

That's the gist of it. I bet one day all the units, equipment, spells, and special abilities will be modded to make tactical combat as good as it was in Age of Wonders oh 17 years ago...one day. But not today. :)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

How depressing.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

And I won't buy Elemental one day earlier.

The way you describe it, even HOMM V and Disciples I-III has better tactical combat, not to mention AoW/MOM or, heaven forbid, dominions.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

You should read that, following all links in the article:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/el...tay-well-away/

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

This is plain false.
There are impassable tiles.
There's also terrain that provides defensive bonus.
It's hard to guess which, since what looks like a hill may not be one, and vice versa, but the terrain has an effect, and some tiles you can't cross (barriers).

False again. Many spells have short range and a side effect (freeze opponent f.e.), some have an area of effect. However all tend to deal the same damage.

Yes. The real issue with tactical battles though is that if you spend 12 mana (4 fireballs targetting 1 target, or 2 lightning targetting 9 squares for 10 mana), it'll take you 12 turns to regenerate it, which means tactical spellcasting is just unusable.

It's also worth mentioning the ai isn't very good yet, and that the one who strikes first still gets a very big advantage.

Overall, I agree that the tactical combat is not yet good enough.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

:(

For those too lazy to follow, I'll summarize:
review summary: "Elemental’s disastrous launch: stay well away"

And quoting this notable paragraph:
"In response to someone saying Elemental “plays like an early beta” on the Quarter to Three forums, Brad requests that anyone who thinks so “please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
"

The review seems to be fair, even considerate. The reviewer states that he's or was a stardock fan and loves the game concept, he also gives a link to a thread in which Brad responds to that sad comment.

All in all, too much drama too little "soul" in this game that I once so looked forward too.
Looks like I have more to look forward too if they'll ever translate that game Dimaz mentioned to English.
Or, some company do an "exact" copy of MOM with production values of 2k11.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

[quote=WraithLord;755473]I don't see what's so bad about the quote though or why PC Gamer is making a deal out of the quote. Maybe it's just how I'm interpreting the quote. All I get is Brad is saying is if a person doesn't think a game is in a good enough state, not to buy it. Sounds fair enough. "Vote with your wallet".

It's not like Brad's making a derogatory comment, or saying he "wants his life back" or calling them "little people" like BP oil's PR campaign and people don't care about that anymore either.

The reviewer says he'll be making a full review soon, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

I'll post a couple impressions as well in a couple more days. I haven't had enough game-time just yet with the release build.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

the problem is that Brad is the CEO of Stardock, thus he can't just act like your average poster! sure, he apologized for it later saying he was tired and sleep deprived, and of course that his quote was out of context, but it's still no excuse for the company's CEO to post in the forums as if he was some child customer. also saying "if you don't feel the game is ready don't buy it" and insisting that he feels the game was actually ready for release, sounds like "this is the game, take it or leave it" instead of "we are aware of the problems and we'll fix them. sorry we released the game too soon, our mistake".

I mean, come on, the game has been released, not beta, retail! you can't release a game and charge money for it when even basic features don't work and the came crashes constantly! sure, they're patching it up and fixing problems on the fly(and causing old problems to reappear it seems), but that's just bad, period. don't release a product until it's ready and mostly bug free, that's pretty basic. if you find the odd bug here and there that's alright, nobody is perfect, but crushing every 10 minutes? having tactical battles not work? AI factions that don't work or don't move outside their capital? those things are basic, and should never happen after release!

they'll probably fix all those bugs eventually, and even fix other things like the UI, AI, etc, heck Elemental might be a good game eventually(in a year or 2) but right now it's just pathetic, and charging money for such an unfinished product(and claiming it is finished) is almost criminal.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Firstly, Brad isn't an average CEO. Stardock is a privately run company, so it's not like he has to answer to the shareholders, and Brad has always been deeply involved in the trenches, so to speak. While he has been known to take criticism poorly, and this is a prime example of that, I'd much rather he continue to lose his temper once in a while and still be actively involved in the community. Also, the review, while fairly accurate in a variety of extents, struck me as somewhat disingenuous in their use of that quote.

Secondly, the reason Elemental's release was so rocky is that several retailers broke the street release date. While the game still would have been rough around the edges without this (notably with respect to balance, which is still remarkably poor, a fact I've been critical of in the Elemental forums) many of the unplayability bugs and crashes probably would not have been large issues if people had been able to access the Day 0 builds properly, which would have happened if the street release had gone as planned.

That said, I really couldn't recommend buying Elemental right now. Personally, I'm just sticking it on the shelf for a month or two till it gets better balanced.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I did generalize for emphasis, but I will be happy to explain my position a bit more. I have played about 50 tactical battles, mostly against wilderness creatures (spiders, bandits, etc.). Those fights have virtually no impassable terrain. In one (and only one) fight, I saw a rock that blocked one square. So there isn't really anything you can plan a strategy around there.

I fought one battle near a town and there was a fence (exciting!) but there were three open squares in said fence. To deny the opponent access to your back line, you'd have to block the area with 5 units (because units can move diagonally). In my opinion if it takes 50% of your army to block a choke point, it's not a choke point. Due to AI "issues" there are never 5+ defenders in a city. More often than not the city is undefended.

You are correct that some tiles provide a defensive bonus or penalty, but surprisingly that doesn't add anything to combat either. I was all about taking the high ground in my first few fights, but honestly I can't tell if the defensive bonus matters in any substantive way or even works at all. First of all as you pointed out they are hard to spot and the terrain does not always indicate the presence of the bonus which is unfortunate. But the real problem is that the battle is always won before it has begun. For instance I found a sand golem in one of the goodie huts and its stats are ridiculous: 36 HP, 17 attack, 9 defense. The golem can kill an unlimited number of bandits, spiders, wolves, etc. It can also attack and then move back a square, effectively kiting enemies that can't be killed in one shot. The defense bonus just doesn't factor into the player's decision making.

Sun Tzu would be proud of my strategy. In real life you are supposed to win the battle before your men take the field. But it doesn't make for a fun game.

You also pointed out that not all spells are infinite range which is correct. In my defense I said "most" spells, and to elaborate my point the problem is that magic is only good in the very early game. As soon as you get Warfare 1, you can choose logistics which allows you to make peasant stacks. 10 turns later the first stack will be done and magic is already on its last legs. I only use offensive magic in the early expansion phase when I'm grabbing all the free goodie huts. So from a tactical point of view, the only spells you'll ever use are infinite range. However, I must admit that this is a playstyle choice. You could certainly choose to use magic but it's like casting Summon Animals with all your nature gems. Just not a good use of your resources. Personally I save all my mana for teleport, because for 5 mana you have an instant army anywhere you want. It's ridiculously overpowered.

I apologize if I was being inflammatory and to be honest Elemental is occasionally fun. But I think we agree in general that the tactical combat is a tragic failure that needs several hundred man hours (minimum) just to get it to 1993 standards. Speaking of Age of Wonders, Elemental does not allow you to drag adjacent units into combat so you can't set up 2-pronged attacks or battles between 3+ factions. Another disappointment that I meant to mention in the previous post.