OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Supposedly SC II was released yesterday (probably only in the US). Anyone here got his hands on a copy?- Any first impressions?

And, bonus gossip quesions, any impressions or thoughts on Elemental?

Last, Does anyone know whether a good FTBS is cooking up somewhere. Something in the caliber of MOM, MOO, AOW or Dominions?- Or put in other words - a game that's worth waiting for? :D

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I've found that strategy games have plummeted in popularity recently, much to my sadness. Planning on getting SCII tomorrow, so I may come back and tell you then.

Usually, I don't hear about games, my friends do, and then they get me to play them, so...no luck on this front.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

SCII is alright. The single player campaign is laughably bad, but the MP is enjoyable if you like tight, competitive games. MP plays very fast, and does require a lot of clicking, so I wouldn't recommend it unless your mouse hand is spry and you enjoy learning hotkeys. I also would not give them any points for innovation; this is basically SCI with some slight improvements to units, abilities, and graphics. As usual, the matchmaking service is great and consistently delivers interesting opponents in 1-10 seconds. I also expect great things from the mod community, which should shortly be rolling out a ton of other games built with the starcraft engine.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental is still a beta and lacks decent ai and a user interface to manage units before I could start enjoying the game. Or providing useful feedback about most game mechanics and balance, actually.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

My hands can no longer stand the punishment of click intensive games. This is all I needed to hear. The day they'll release a TBS starcraft - well that's a worthy fantasy...

Elemental, hopefully would have a soul, the way MOO, MOM and dominions have. I have a bad feeling about that though.

Hehe, and while I'm fantasizing I may hope for dom-III source to be released and dom-IV created as a free source project - or better yet for IW to get bored with their new project and develop the next installment of dominions :p

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Sounds like SCII is exactly what I expected from it. More of the same in a bit more polished and revised form.

Would you care to elaborate a bit more on what's bad about the campaign?

Fluffypaw

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental is shaping up to be good. The idea's shown so far are good. I especially like the gameplay mechanic of researching "adventure" and then being able to take on more rewarding quests at locations on the map; it sounds cheesy but its a new aspect to turn based strategy.

At this stage the developer admits there is more to do to get it to release quality which is encouraging and positive. Unless they have been doing stuff (balancing ect.,) that is not in the beta then I doubt it will be ready by the current release date. I also believe that they have done work that is not in the beta so fingers crossed.

I don't know what a "F-TBS" is but Sword of the Stars is great, I purchased the complete collection yesterday at half price. I had hoped be able to direct you all to a sale but its apparently ended.... Still its a great TBS with pausable real time battles that are fun to play.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/sotscomcol

*edit* Oh! FANTASY-TBS! Well if you don't believe in aliens then SotS is "fantasy" ;)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Well, perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on the campaign. They have some neat levels (a volcanic planet where lava regularly floods the low ground, a high UV planet where conditions change radically between night and day). And it is all very professional; it is not like there are any technical flaws in the missions. But they are not the all our slaughter-fest, macro heavy, total war missions that I know and love from BroodWar. Rather they tend to be fairly simple and easy, and the experience reminds me of playing Plants vs Zombies, i.e. somewhat enjoyable in a brain-dead, time-wasty sort of way.

What really gets me though are the cut scenes. So many cut scenes. So much awful dialog and so many cliches. So many shoulderpads. It's like they can only do so many characters/settings, or perhaps like Warhammer/Warhammer40K; every character type or aspect in one setting (WoW) has to exist in the other setting (Starcraft) whether it makes any sense or not. So we have protoss temples that look like Night Elf temples, and Prince Arthas as Prince whatever of the Dominion, and what is quite literally a dwarf running your upgrade center.

And why is Kerrigan wearing heels and lipstick? And why is she personally fighting on the front lines? Is this really what I fought the Broodwar for? I don't know. I just wish they had done something better/more creative with 10 years and who knows how many million dollars.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I pre-purchased Elemental, despite myself, after finding the Gal Civ game dry, like a mathmetician trying to describe jazz with algebra equations.

I can get Elemental to run on my laptop, but can't see the map so I can't say much about it other than its time to get a new laptop.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

My laptop is close to five years old now and runs the Elemental beta. Its sluggish but apparently this will be fixed by the final release.

The game was touted to be playable on the most basic netbook, I hope it lives up to this claim or I will have to buy a new computer... :(

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental is not living up to any of the hype. The modding beta starts tomorrow. Hopefully it will offer something, but they have already toned it down as well making it xml driven instead of python.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

:lol this really hits the :target:
very well put

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

WL, to your first question, about other fantasy TBS games. There is one, Eador (www.eador.com), that I play for a year already. It was made by a small team (1 person made almost everything and some others helped with graphics and music I think), it's 2D, and it's really fun. Unfortunately, there is only Russian version so far. Author first distributed it himself, but now he has contract with some Russian publisher company and I think they're going to make a translation and release English version sooner or later, also they're going to make 3D version AFAIK. Unfortunately the game has lots of text that is hard to translate preserving original style, so the attempts for fan translations sort of failed.
About the gameplay: you play on random generated maps consisting of provinces. In the starting prov there's your castle where you can build buildings (more than 200 I think, they gradually appear in campaign) and buy units and heroes, and memorize spells. Each hero can lead up to 15 units, so the fight is maximum 16x16. Units have morale and fatigue stats as in dom3. The combat is turn-based, first one side then the other. The units and spells have different tiers; each hero has slots for some tier 1 units, less for tier 2 and so on, same with spells. Spells are recharged after battle. There are 2 resources, gold and magic crystals. All units and heroes collect exp in battles, the cap is lvl30. There are 4 basic classes of heroes and each class can dual on lvl 10 or remain the same (1-10: Warrior, Archer, Commander, Mage, 11-30: W-W, W-A, W-C, W-M, A-W, A-A, etc, where W-A and A-W are different classes). Units get upgrades on every levelup and also can receive a medal for some exceptional performance in battle (like dealing damage 3*own hp etc).
All provinces are owned by indies at start, and the farther the prov is from someone's cap, the stronger indies are. There are special sites in provinces, some of them are known from the beginning and some require searching. The guardians have the same distribution around the caps as indies. First ring has tier-1 units, second t2 etc. You can build guard in captured provinces and up to 3 buildings. Buildings can give some economic effect or allow to recruit units (forts) or other bonuses, guards, well, guard the province (you can have only 1 guard at a time).
OK, I think it's enough for now :) Overall, I really like it, and it costs only 10$ if you buy it directly from author as I did (don't know about publisher's price policy). Of course there are some problems here and there, but I definitely recommend it to everyone interested in MOM, HOMM, AOW style game.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Eador is a nice game.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

This Eador sounds real nice. The screenshots look cool as well. I hope they'll do an English version sometime.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Nooo. Don't tell me this about Starcraft! See, I sorta' ignore WoW; so, to me, Blizzard is still this tiny niche company that doesn't have a lot of money, but find a style of game, and perfects it and combines all the awesomeness of other games within that style, and then releases a product like Diablo or Starcraft (heck, even Warcraft).

This sounds like I will have to face the fact that Blizzard got *huge* and seems to be succumbing the the money-hoggishness of most other huge companies.

:cry: I miss the Blizzard of yore.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I think you can even try to play Russian demo. Probably you won't understand the plot or random events, but you can still taste the combat system. BTW, I sort of learned English playing Star Control 2 in '93 on my 286, and I think Eador is the perfect way to learn a bit of Russian :)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

In Eador all text are open in txt files, so can be easy automatic pseudotranslated

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I find that the campaign in Starcraft 2 is the best RTS single player I have played.

I only play on brutal difficulty (highest) and have to fight like an animal to win a scenario (I have so far not manage to win on my first try). Given that the scenarios are 20-30 min long it is really intensive and it does not feel bad when replaying after I have lost.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I downloaded a file called Eador_1.04.1_full.exe but it does not seem to work. I got to something that looks like a installation wizard and then click a button I think is next and then it gives me an error message in russian and exits.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Eador looks very cool - with soul, in fact! I second the motion for an english version for us lazy Yankees. :)

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Eador_1.04.1_full.exe is a patch to 1.04.1 from any version. I think you need http://files.games.1c.ru/eador/demo/...demo_setup.exe

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Maybe that's my problem Folket, I've been playing on normal. I'll try to go back to it on Brutal and see if my impressions change.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Eador screenshots look nice. Pity it's Russsian-only.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

And I agree about the cut scenes. I never like the though cowboy style. Also all men except Matt and the news reporter looks like mutants.

But I like to look at the news after the missions.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Dude, I knew that there's a deep relationship of music and math, one of our emeriti profs recently published a book on this, but I had no idea about all that jazz...

After hearing the podcast at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/lehmantod...that_jazz.html I've been taking a look at the lesson plans at
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/mus...plan/4851.html and http://www.teachervision.fen.com/mus...plan/4862.html
and now I'm seeing this with new eyes. Those that made it through all this might even take the Jazz exam if they dare.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Basically it goes like this for the sc2-campaign:

Casual: The enemy doesn't really build units and have half health compared to you.
Normal: Same AI as casual but normal health.
Hard: The enemy actually builds stuff, if you want a decent challenge this is the right difficulty level.
Brutal: Ohmygodwhydotheykeepcoming?!?

There's plenty of stuff that annoys me in the campaign (like kerrigan going from a pretty good villain in BW to... a whiny nihilist? And the most drawn-out Fox News-joke in history.), but it's good enough that you won't get bored if you play on hard.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Yeah, so far in the campaign, the in-between missions are silly and meh, but the gameplay is very interesting for the most part, so I appreciate that. Sounds like I need to up the difficulty from "normal" though, haha.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I also found that perfect, although Ich has a point.

I also agree with Foodstamp about Elemental, which has actually gone gold last week. There are not very many things I enjoy about it, but that could change after release. Currently, I think it will be a fun thing to play with for people who love modding; since I do not, I feel a bit left out. It "feels" like CivIV with bland tactical battles, and the technology innovations are still grouped into GC2-like "trees" or clusters that are all thematically related (e.g. Adventure, Diplomacy, Warfare, Civilization, Magic), it smacks too much of Lasers, Shields, and Diplomacy. The combat side of things is also currently underdeveloped. In general, there is also a great reliance on "Random House" (the company) to write wonderful things in terms of in-game texts -- not actual people, mind you, but the corporation itself is always personalized, as if they would deficate gold. But the hard core of the fan-base seems vitally, almost rabidly pleased, so that there are sure to be many people who are more than happy. Constructive criticism is not always welcome. Where I do have great hopes, however, is for the AI; I think Brad Wardell always does more than his share in that department, and I am sure that we will see strong new developments there before release and afterwards as well.

I don't find myself terribly excited about it now, and the current Beta, two weeks before release, is not a treat to play, although it will run on my laptop quite nicely.

I have heard very mixed things about Sword of the Stars. Are there many people here who enjoy it greatly?

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Sword of the Stars is on my ToPlay list, right after completing HoMM V's (annoying) campaign, Warhammer mark of Chaos and Discipless III, so at the rate I'm going I'll get to it in a few years, or never ;)

I recently purchased Discipless III and played a bit with it. Its quite pleasing to the eyes (gfx) and ears (music is cool, voice over is bad). Quite shallow tactically and strategically but fun in a, I'm too tired to actually think, kind of way.

All the bits and pieces I hear about elemental point to a dissapointing release. I think I'll stay on the fence for a while longer before trying it.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

It bugs me that all of the "it's not ready" threads get locked, even the constructive ones. Usually with the response, "Beta 4 isn't release" with the implication that all the awesome is just lurking on the horizon waiting to explode all over your screen.

Through the whole development process (almost a year now) in my head I was expecting it to not live up to expectations. But my heart was hoping against hope that it would be awesome. I guess we'll see next week, the beta players may get a copy of the game a couple days early and provide some early reviews. But I can't see it being a replacement for Dominions, Civ, or even the old school quality titles (MoM, AoW). I can't even imagine what the game would be like if they decided to release it in February. :shock:

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Those get locked HERE?

If you mean on the official forum by the games publisher then I wouldnt consider it surprising. They have no reason to appreciate "its not ready" posts. Even the constructive ones. :) They would tend to have an overriding interest in upbeat posts prior to release. That might be irritating, but I wouldnt consider surprising.

But there are plenty of other forums and newsgroups having that discussion.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

My plan for Elemental is to wait a year, then get it. I reckon they will have it all sorted by then, and the modders will have corrected any of the egregious failures of judgement that Brad is sometimes prone to.

Has anyone played "Distant Worlds"? I just stumbled across it - looks like it might be pretty awesome.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I had high hopes for a while, but they can't seem to get criticism. Even when they do things that are completely stupid (The Empire and Kingdom dichotomy in troop enhancement and such.) the fan base worships them, and if someone raises a legitimate criticism they are either shot down by the mods or everyone else on the testing forum. Its getting eerily similar to Pathfinder in that regard really.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I meant Elemental threads on the Elemental forums. And I'm not surprised either, I'm just bothered by the behavior. I didn't think my post was that unclear to be honest. :p

I am just thinking that if I were Stardock and I made this awesome gem of a game, I would let the beta community ooh and ahh all day long. The only reason (in my estimation) to hide features and lock threads is to obfuscate the fact that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

It usually goes like this:

Guy 1: Man this game is not ready to be released. It is not fun, buggy and is nowhere near polished.

Guy 2: STFU you retard! Beta 4 is nothing like release! It is going to pwnzer and you are dumb and stuff.

Me: Hey, you probably shouldn't call that guy a retard just because he is critical of the current state of the game.

Guy 2: LAWL you are retard too for thinking it is not ready.

Frogboy: The betas are nothing like the actual game we are going to be releasing; you guys were really playing the beta for another game.

Guy 2: LOL told you so dewdz.

Guy 3: LOL noobs Stardock tricked you noobs into thinking you were playing teh Elemental Beta.

Thread gets locked.

Rinse, repeat.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Not bad. Also to be figured into it...
Game changes gained? zero
Game suggestion now on the "I will never consider that" list? one
Game sales lost due to browsers and lurkers who stumble across the thread? unestimable
Time lost trying to get the programmers back to excited motivation about the game? well worth noting

I also love the reference to the perfectly good suggestion being shot down by the fan base. Meaning that most of the people didnt seem to agree with the wonderful suggestion.

There is a reason that game suggestions go thru a middle man. IF you really have something you feel should be considered then it should be sent to the publishing company so that they can present it in a way that can get it considered. Something that most forum members SORELY lack.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

It is my understanding that Stardock is both the developer and publisher on this one, so I'm not sure what you are getting at. Even if someone else was publishing Stardock's game I don't see it would help to explain game mechanics to people who don't actually make the games. What is the publisher going to care about your ideas?

Even the constructive threads are full of fail though. For instance in one thread the guy posted suggestions for making the magic system better, because basically right now the elemental damage spells are identical and the spells lack distinctiveness. So he gave all these great suggestions, then got mobbed by the fanbois and the thread got locked. Stardock chose to have this open beta process; the least they could do is listen to the people that pre-ordered their game and did their best to improve it. Again, not surprising but it bothers me all the same.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I think that's the point. Why have an open beta if you're not going to listen to the feedback? Is there a mechanism for suggestions from the beta testers to "be sent to the publishing company"? Or is that company's forum the mechanism?
If you don't want criticism in public, don't do the beta test in public.

Sure, lock the threads that are like the faux example above, but listen to actual suggestions and give some indication that you're listening. If it's not really a test, just a way to generate positive word-of-mouth, then it's kind of annoying.

It could be partly the fan base though. If anything but raves turns into a flame war, then that's a harder problem to deal with.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Stardock is well known for having open betas, and then not listening to the feedback. Still, they are the top developer of TBS games in my book, and their AI's are top notch. I will try Elemental... it looks like a poor man's Dom3, crossed with MoM.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental is a worry. I have the beta and so far have been... largely unimpressed. It promises much that I should like but I ask myself will it deliver considering release is a few days away?

Ultimately I think that it will be brilliant with time.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

sector24, can you give example links to the threads you mention?- If what you describe is true then I think I'll avoid elemental altogether.

You know, I now recall making a two suggestion posts that got, well, ignored. No wonder...

You can check for yourself:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/329075
http://forums.elementalgame.com/330349

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Another facet to this 20-sided dice would be this post from usenet.

A person asked about the game saying it was due soon but he hadnt seen much chatter on it. One of the response posts was this....

On the one hand this does support the statement that the release date might be something to avoid.

On the other hand it does not give me the impression that new ideas are being ignored. If anything, quite the opposite. So if one or two ideas seem to have gotten no attention except flamage from fans Id suspect they did not meet the criteria.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

http://forums.elementalgame.com/389642

http://forums.elementalgame.com/389083

http://forums.elementalgame.com/388766

http://forums.elementalgame.com/388747

I didn't have time to do too much digging, but this is the general gist of things. There are a whole lot of threads talking about how the tactical combat is awful, how the spells lack distinctiveness, how the research is overly simplistic, etc. They don't all get locked but the "promise" that release will be awesome while all evidence is to the contrary is a bit disingenuous.

I believe the fanatical side of the fan base is sometimes a hindrance as well. I have a difficult time getting objective information out of their forums because there's a ridiculous amount of blind praise and bashing of any contrary viewpoints. That is of course not Stardock's fault per se, but from my (cynical) viewpoint they condition the forumites to tow the party line for "karma" or the slim chance that "Frogboy posts in my thread" kind of stuff.

I'm wasting altogether too much time talking about Elemental. :) But I guess I'm overly harsh simply because it's almost worse to come so close to success and still fail than it is to just come up with crap in the first place. I guess I set my standards a little too high.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Good examples.

Frankly, I don't understand SD's attitude.

As a dev I highly value potential customers inputs. It doesn't matter if it's "constructive" or plain *****ing (in case of *****ing I just filter the facts from the noise). Comments are good, criticism is good since at end of the day the product is developed for the costumers not for the devs.

SD seems to be pretty resistant to external influence, the threads give the impression that they know what they're doing, all the comments are already in their ToDo list and the beta version is nothing compared to that hidden version they plan to release.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental will be great, it may need more time but the engine for a fantastic 4X game (in whatever guise the modders wish to take it) is there.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I dont think it will be that great. Just ok.
The graphics look good, but combat mechanics looks very simplistic.

Once I know the mechanics of Dominions 3 then some of the other games looks worse somehow.

Just attack and defense? I remember playing Warlord 2 tough where the units just had Strenght. I doubt they will use an open dice so it will be the strongest unit wins always.

And other thing I noticed in the videos is that buildings are finished in just a couple of turns vs Master of Magic where a granary took like 35 turns to complete. I dislike the spam of buildings just dislike the spam of techs of Gal Civ 2 where you had laser, laser II, etc. Master of Orion tech tree is ok, just laser and you can modify it later when you get more tech (auto fire, A Piercing etc.)

And finally, even if Frogboy gets angry, the factions looks lame.
Good guys and bad guys. You get to design your won tough. I think i would.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I'll probably write some impressions once Elemental comes out and I've had a few days to see how it plays. I'm a bit hesitant with the game from what I've seen in the beta, but it's still the beta so it's not fair to judge quite yet. I liked a couple of the attributes of the game, but there's some notable glaring shortfalls that need to be addressed too before I'd recommend it to anyone. (eg. combat has been bare-bones so far, so no one other than the devs has seen how it'll play out with unit special abilities or all the graphical effects). Stability has been poor for me as of beta 4 as well, so hopefully they do end up ironing out the crashes by release.

I agree with poster above about the factions; they all look bland and kind of the same.. just tan-skinned humanoids, gothic humanoids, some red-skinned humanoid and a blue-skinned humanoid. The concept art looked a lot more stylistic and seemed to accentuate differences in the appearance of the races, but the in-game units just don't have an appealing look so far.

Also, the faction capabilities are poorly documented. For example this is the strength and weaknesses of one of the factions, Umber, in beta 4:
Strength- caravans build roads faster
Weakness- -20% tech knowledge

That's all. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't say I'm excited about building roads faster as a racial/faction ability. I'd hope the factions will be a lot more unique than that. I'd prefer to see factions to be as varied as the races of Master of Magic, or Dominions, or Heroes of Might & Magic town types versus difference among Civilization games. At least Civilization had the excuse that it isn't a fanstay-era game and all Civs are human so they couldn't have factions that regenerate, or fly, so I can be a bit more lenient with a game like Civ having similar faction capabilities.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

I had a bad feeling about elemental when I saw the factions were like Kingdom of Galdor, Kingdom of Minos, Kingdom of [insert generic fantasy sounding name]. And I am making those up b/c I don’t feel like looking to see what the actual ones were but they were just as bland and indistinct. By way of contrast take a look of the old map of the World of Greyhawk for some inspiration – Hold of the Sea Princes, Caliphate of Ekbir, Bone March, Abbor Alz, etc.

And I am guessing in Elemental one will have some generic trade bonus, one will have a generic research bonus etc. Stardock is like a soulless robot. I like the flavor and eccentricity of games like AD&D (1st edition) or Dominions, with all the weird rules and exceptions that make it difficult to reduce everything to numbers. Stardock games feel like spreadsheets with shallow-cliched themes pasted on.

I pre-ordered elemental and cannot get it to run on my laptop so I am the first to admit I could be wrong. But hearing these reports seem to confirm my fears that it is going to have as much flavor as a rice puff.

Re: OT: Starcraft II and Elemental
 

Elemental BETA4 Review: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Good:
1) Extensive modding will allow the game to become more evolved, balanced, and even more game content such as items, spells, creatures, quests, etc.,.
2) Good Diplomacy in the game for AI and human players
3) Randomly generated worlds where very rare technologies, creatures and resources will only appear in some games.
4) Custom design of sovereign and rumor is the final version will allow custom design of your nation.

The Bad:
1) The map editor was half broken thus the final version being released will not have much beta testing. It seems the map editor was designed by someone who's never used map editors... so creating a large terrain area is time consuming, no method for editing existing stuff placed on maps, single letters used for resources,creatures, etc., instead of an actual name/image, no method to assign creatures/buildings to a player, and so on and so on.
2) No 64Bit version... it's been tossed on the shelf for "later". This means limited map size until who knows. :(
3) Races/Nations are all human... some with different colored skin. I really didn't recognize any personality/behavior differences so all opponents are just clones of each other.
4) The community provided many topics of advice, but I can't seem to locate any ideas which were actually merged into the game. The Elemental ideas forums is a treasure trove of creativity and the BETA4 seems to only have basics of a game included many which copy a civilization game.

The Ugly:
1) Multiplayer requires an umbilical cord thru the internet into Stardock. Stardock developers are calling this LAN gaming which has stirred a huge argument of complaints from multiplayer gamers. The same as Gal_Civ_2 the multiplayer complaints will be generating some of the largest threads. More here: http://forums.elementalgame.com/390801
2) The BETA4 had major bugs such as saved games not loading, crash to desktop bugs, brain dead AI opponents, and heavy memory/performance trouble. I'm sure many of these will be fixed, but like all previous version releases I expect some major game breaking bugs in the official released version.

========
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Overall I'm somewhat disappointed\bored with the gameplay and battles. No stealth, no black markets, most terrain has no difference on the map, quests are basic, races(all_human) with very minor differences, not much spell creativity/uniqueness, battles lack excitement, and its lacking real character skills such as druids, clerics, assassins, etc., . The battle for good multiplayer seems like a losing battle.
I believe the game can evolve into something great by the community because of the modding.